i. 



MIXED E SSAYS 
lEISH ESSAYS 

AND OTHEES 



BY 



MATTHEW AENOLD 



MACMILLAN" AND CO. 

1883 






fiy Transfer 
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Printed by R. & R. Clark, Edinburgh. 



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2 



MIXED ESSAYS 




7/ 



PEEFACE. 



The first essay in this volume was published nearly 
twenty years ago, as preface to a work on Continental 
Schools, which has probably been read by specialists 
only. The other essays have appeared in well-known 
reviews. 

The present volume touches a variety of subjects, 
and yet it has a unity of tendency — a unity which 
has more interest for an author himself, no doubt, 
than for other people ; but which my friendly readers, 
whose attention has long been my best encourage- 
ment and reward, will not unwillingly suffer me, 
perhaps, to point out to them. 

Whoever seriously occupies himself with literature 
will soon perceive its vital connection with other 
agencies. Suppose a man to be ever so much con- 
vinced that hterature is, as indisputably it is, a 
powerful agency for benefiting the world and for 
civihsing it, such a man cannot but see that there 
are many obstacles preventing what is salutary in 
literature from gaining general admission, and from 
producing due eff'ect. Undoubtedly, literature can 
of itself do something towards removing those ob- 
stacles, and towards making straight its own way. 
But it cannot do all. In other words, literature is 
a part of civilisation ; it is not the whole. What 



VlU PEEFACE. 

then is civilisation, "^liich some people seem to con- 
ceive of as if it meant railroads and the penny post, 
and little more, but which is really so complex and 
vast a matter that a great spiritual power, like 
literature, is a part of it, and a part only 1 Civilisa- 
tion is the humanisation of man in society. Man is 
civilised when the whole body of society comes to live 
with a life worthy to be called human, and correspond- 
ing to man's true aspirations and powers. 

The means by which man is brought towards this 
goal of his endeavour are various. It is of great 
importance to us to attain an adequate notion of 
them, and to keep it present before our minds. 
They may be conceived quite plainly, and enounced 
without any parade of hard and abstruse expression. 

First and foremost of the necessary means towards 
man's civilisation we must name expansion. The need 
of expansion is as genuine an instinct in man as the 
need in plants for the light, or the need in man him- 
self for going upright. All the conveniences of life 
by which man has enlarged and secured his existence 
— railroads and the penny post among the number 
— are due to the working in man of this force or 
instinct of expansion. But the manifestation of it 
which we English know best, and prize most, is the 
love of liberty. 

The love of liberty is simply the instinct in man 
for expansion. jSTot only to find oneself tyrannised 
over and outraged is a defeat to this instinct, but in 
general, to feel oneself over -tutored, over -governed, 
sate upon (as the popular phrase is) by authority, is 
a defeat to it. Prince Bismarck says : " After all, a 
benevolent rational absolutism is the best form of 
government." Plenty of arguments may be adduced 
in support of such a thesis. The one fatal objection 
to it is that it is against nature, that it contradicts 



PEEFACE. IX 

a vital instinct in man — the instinct of expansion. 
And man is not to be civilised or humanised, call it 
which you will, by thwarting his vital instincts. In 
fact, the benevolent rational absolutism always breaks 
down. It is found that the ruler cannot in the long 
run be trusted ; it is found that the ruled deteriorate 
Why ? Because the proceeding is against nature. 

The other great manifestation of the instinct of 
expansion is the love of equality. Of the love of 
equality we English have little ; but, undoubtedly, it 
is no more a false tendency than the love of liberty. 
Undoubtedly, immense inequality of conditions and 
property is a defeat to the instinct of expansion ; it 
depresses and degrades the inferior masses. The 
common people is and must be, as Tocqueville said, 
more uncivilised in aristocratic countries than in any 
others. A thousand arguments may be discovered 
in favour of inequality, just as a thousand arguments 
may be discovered in favour of absolutism. And the 
one insuperable objection to inequality is the same 
as the one insuperable objection to absolutism : 
namely, that inequality, like absolutism, thwarts 
a vital instinct, and being thus against nature, is 
against our humanisation. On the one side, in fact, 
inequality harms by pampering ; on the other, by 
vulgarising and depressing. A system founded on 
it is against nature, and in the long run breaks 
down. 

I put first among the elements in human civilisa- 
tion the instinct of expansion, because it is the basis 
which man's whole efi'ort to civilise himself pre- 
supposes. General civilisation presupposes this in- 
stinct, which is inseparable from human nature ; 
presupposes its being satisfied, not defeated. The 
basis being given, we may rapidly enumerate the 
powers which, upon this basis, contribute to build 



X PREFACE. 

up human civilisation. They are the power of con- 
duct, the power of intellect and knowledge, the 
power of beauty, the power of social life and manners. 
Expansion, conduct, science, beauty, manners, — here 
are the conditions of civilisation, the claimants which 
man must satisfy before he can be humanised. 

That the aim for all of us is to make civilisation 
pervasive and general ; that the requisites for civilisa- 
tion are substantially what have been here enumerated; 
that they all of them hang together, that they must 
all have their development, that the development 
of one does not compensate for the failure of others j 
that one nation suffers by failiug in this requisite, 
and another by failing in that : such is the line of 
thought which the essays in the present volume 
follow and represent. They represent it in their 
variety of subject, their so frequent insistence on 
defects in the present actual life of our nation, their 
unity of final aim. Undoubtedly, that aim is not 
given by the life which we now see around us. 
Undoubtedly, it is given by "a sentiment of the 
ideal life." But then the ideal life is, in sober and 
practical truth, "none other than man's normal life, 
as we shall one day know it." 



CONTENTS. 



I. Democracy ..... 1 

II. Equality ..... 36 

III. Irish Catholicism axd British Liberalism 73 

lY. " PoRRO Unum est Necessarium" . . 107 

Y. A GriDE TO English Literature . . 134 L^ 

YI. Falkland ..... 154 

YII. A French Critic on Milton . . . 178 *^ 

YIII. A French Critic on Goethe . . . 206 

IX. George Sand ..... 236 



I. 

DEMOCEACY. 

In giving an account of education in certain countries 
of the Continent, I have often spoken of the State 
and its action in such a way as to offend, I fear, some 
of my readers, and to surprise others. With many 
Englishmen, perhaps with the majority, it is a maxim 
that the State, the executive power, ought to be 
entrusted with no more means of action than those 
which it is impossible to withhold from it ; that the 
State neither would nor could make a safe use of any 
more extended liberty ; would not, because it has in 
itself a natural instinct of despotism, which, if not 
jealously checked, would become outrageous ; could 
not, because it is, in truth, not at all more enlightened, 
or fit to assume a lead, than the mass of this en- 
lightened community. 

No sensible man will lightly go counter to an 
opinion firmly held by a great body of his country- 
men. He will take for granted, that for any opinion 
which has struck deep root among a people so 
powerful, so successful, and so well worthy of respect 
as the people of this country, there certainly either 
are, or have been, good and sound reasons. He will 
venture to impugn such an opinion with real hesita- 
tion, and only when he thinks he perceives that the 

VOL. IV. ^ B 



2 MIXED ESSAYS. [i. 

reasons -whicli once supported it exist no longer, or 
at any rate seem about to disappear very soon. For 
undoubtedly there arrive periods, when, the circum- 
stances and conditions of government having changed, 
the guiding maxims of government ought to change 
also. Tai dit souvent^ says Mirabeau,^ admonishing 
the Court of France in 1790, qv^on devait changer de 
manihre de gouverner, lorsque le gouvernement n'est plus 
le meme. And these decisive changes in the political 
situation of a people happen gradually as well as 
violently. "In the silent lapse of events," says 
Burke,^ writing in England twenty years before the 
French Eevolution, "as material alterations have 
been insensibly brought about in the policy and 
character of governments and nations, as those which 
have been marked by the tumult of public revolu- 
tions." 

I propose to submit to those who have been 
accustomed to regard all State-action with jealousy, 
some reasons for thinking that the circumstances 
which once made that jealousy prudent and natural 
have undergone an essential change. I desire to 
lead them to consider with me, whether, in th- 
present altered conjuncture, that State-action, whic] 
was once dangerous, may not become, not onl 
without danger in itself, but the means of helping u 
against dangers from another quarter. To combin 
and present the considerations upon which these tw 
propositions are based, is a task of some difficult 
and delicacy. My aim is to invite impartial reflectio 
upon the subject, not to make a hostile attack again? 
old opinions, still less to set on foot and fully equi 
a new theory. In offering, therefore, the though' 

1 Correspondance entre le Comte de Miraheau et le Comte de 
Mardc, publiee par M. de Bacourt, Paris, 1851, vol. ii. p. 143 

2 Bm^ke's Works (edit, of 1852), vol. iii. p. 115. 



I,] DEMOCRACY. 6 

which have suggested themselves to me, I shall 
studiously avoid all particular applications of them 
likely to give offence, and shall use no more illustra- 
tion and development than may be indispensable to 
enable the reader to seize and appreciate them. 

The dissolution of the old political parties which 
have governed this country since the Eevolution of 
1688 has long been remarked. It was repeatedly 
declared to be happening long before it actually took 
place, while the vital energy of these parties still 
subsisted in full vigour, and was threatened only by 
some temporary obstruction. It has been eagerly 
deprecated long after it had actually begun to take 
place, when it was in full progress, and inevitable. 
These parties, differing in so much else, were yet 
alike in this, that they were both, in a certain broad 
sense, aristocratical parties. They were combinations 
of persons considerable, either by great family and 
estate, or by Court favour, or lastly, by eminent 
abilities and popularity ; this last body, however, 
attaining participation in public affairs only through 
a conjunction with one or other of the former. 
These connections, though they contained men of 
very various degrees of birth and property, were still 
wholly leavened with the feelings and habits of the 
upper class of the nation. They had the bond of a 
common culture ; and, however their political opinions 
and acts might differ, what they said and did had 
the stamp and style imparted by this culture, and by 
a common and elevated social condition. 

Aristocratical bodies have no taste for a very 
imposing executive, or for a very active and pene- 
trating domestic administration. They have a sense 
of equality among themselves, and of constituting in 
themselves what is greatest and most dignified in the 
realm, which makes their pride revolt against the 



4 MIXED ESSAYS. [i. 

overshadowing greatness and dignity of a command- 
ing executive. They have a temper of independence, 
and a habit of uncontrolled action, which makes them 
impatient of encountering, in the management of the 
interior concerns of the country, the machinery and 
regulations of a superior and peremptory power. 
The different parties amongst them, as they success- 
ively get possession of the government, respect this 
jealous disposition in their opponents, because they 
share it themselves. It is a disposition proper to 
them as great personages, not as ministers ; and as 
they are great personages for their whole life, while 
they may probably be ministers but for a very short 
time, the instinct of their social condition avails more 
with them than the instinct of their official function. 
To administer as little as possible, to make its weight 
felt in foreign affairs rather than in domestic, to see 
in ministerial station rather the means of power and 
dignity than a means of searching and useful ad- 
ministrative activity, is the natural tendency of an 
aristocratic executive. It is a tendency which is 
creditable to the good sense of aristocracies, honour- 
able to their moderation, and at the same time 
fortunate for their country, of whose internal 
development they are not fitted to have the full 
direction. 

One strong and beneficial influence, however, the 
administration of a vigorous and high-minded aris- 
tocracy is calculated to exert upon a robust and 
sound people. I have had occasion, in speaking of 
Homer, to say very often^ and with much emphasis, 
that he is in the grand style. It is the chief virtue of 
a healthy and uncorrupted aristocracy, that it is, in 
general, in this grand style. That elevation of 
character, that noble way of thinking and behaving, 
which is an eminent gift of nature to some individuals. 



I.] DEMOCRACY. 5 

is also often generated in whole classes of men (at least 
when these come of a strong and good race) by the 
possession of power, by the importance and responsi- 
bility of high station, by habitual dealing with great 
things, by being placed above the necessity of con- 
stantly struggling for little things. And it is the 
source of great virtues. It may go along with a not 
very quick or open intelligence ; but it cannot well 
go along with a conduct vulgar and ignoble. A 
governing class imbued with it may not be capable 
of intelligently leading the masses of a people to the 
highest pitch of welfare for them ; but it sets them 
an invaluable example of qualities without which no 
really high welfare can exist. This has been done 
for their nation by the best aristocracies. The 
Eoman aristocracy did it ; the English aristocracy 
has done it. They each fostered in the mass of the 
peoples they governed, — peoples of sturdy moral 
constitution and apt to learn such lessons, — a great- 
ness of spirit, the natural growth of the condition of 
magnates and rulers, but not the natural growth of 
the condition of the common people. They made, 
the one of the Eoman, the other of the English 
people, in spite of all the shortcomings of each, 
great peoples, peoples in the grand style. And this 
they did, while wielding the people according to 
their own notions, and in the direction which seemed 
good to them ; not as servants and instruments of 
the people, but as its commanders and heads ; 
solicitous for the good of their country, indeed, but 
taking for granted that of that good they themselves 
were the supreme judges, and were to fix the con- 
ditions. 

The time has arrived, however, when it is be- 
coming impossible for the aristocracy of England to 
conduct and wield the English nation any longer. 



6 MIXED ESSAYS. [i. 

It still, indeed, administers public aifairs ; and it is 
a great error to suppose, as many persons in England 
suppose, that it administers but does not govern. 
He who administers, governs,^ because he infixes his 
own mark and stamps his own character on all public 
affairs as they pass through his hands ; and, therefore, 
so long as the English aristocracy administers the 
commonwealth, it still governs it. But signs not to 
be mistaken show that its headship and leadership 
of the nation, by virtue of the substantial acquiescence 
of the body of the nation in its predominance and 
right to lead, is nearly over. That acquiescence was 
the tenure by which it held its power ; and it is fast 
giving way. The superiority of the upper class over 
all others is no longer so great ; the willingness of 
the others to recognise that superiority is no longer 
so ready. 

This change has been brought about by natural 
and inevitable causes, and neither the great nor the 
multitude are to be blamed for it. The growing 
demands and audaciousness of the latter, the en- 
croaching spirit of democracy, are, indeed, matters of 
loud complaint with some persons. But these persons 
are complaining of human nature itself, when they 
thus complain of a manifestation of its native and 
ineradicable impulse. Life itself consists, say the 
philosophers, in the effort to affirm one's oivn essence; 
meaning by this, to develop one's own existence fully 
and freely, to have ample light and air, to be neither 
cramped nor overshadowed. Democracy is trying to 
affirm its own essence ; to live, to enjoy, to possess the 
world, as aristocracy has tried, and successfully tried, 
before it. Ever since Europe emerged from barbarism, 
ever since the condition of the common people began a 

^ Administrer, c'est gouverner, says Mirabeau ; gouverner, 
c'est regner ; tout se rddicit Id. 



1.] DEMOCRACY. 7 

little to improve, ever since their minds began to stir, 
this effort of democracy has been gaining strength ; 
and the more their condition improves, the more 
strength this effort gains. So potent is the charm 
of life and expansion upon the living ; the moment 
men are aware of them, they begin to desire them, 
and the more they have of them, the more they 
crave. 

This movement of democracy, like other operations 
of nature, merits properly neither blame nor praise. 
Its partisans are apt to give it credit which it does 
not deserve, while its enemies are apt to upbraid it 
unjustly. Its friends celebrate it as the author of 
all freedom. But political freedom may very well 
be established by aristocratic founders ; and, certainly, 
the political freedom of England owes more to the 
grasping English barons than to democracy. Social 
freedom, — equality, — that is rather the field of the 
conquests of democracy. And here what I must call 
the injustice of its enemies comes in. For its seeking 
after equality, democracy is often, in this country 
above all, vehemently and scornfully blamed; its 
temper contrasted with that worthier temper which 
can magnanimously endure social distinctions ; its 
operations all referred, as of course, to the stirrings 
of a base and malignant envy. No doubt there is a 
gross and vulgar spirit of envy, j^rompting the hearts 
of many of those who cry for equality. No doubt 
there are ignoble natures which prefer equality to 
liberty. But what we have to ask is, when the life 
of democracy is admitted as something natural and 
inevitable, whether this or that product of democracy 
is a necessary growth from its parent stock, or merely 
an excrescence upon it. If it be the latter, certainly 
it may be due to the meanest and most culpable 
passions. But if it be the former, then this product, 



8 MIXED ESSAYS. [i. 

however base and blamewortliy the passions which it 
may sometimes be made to serve, can in itself be no 
more reprehensible than the vital impulse of demo- 
cracy is in itself reprehensible ; and this impulse is, 
as has been shown, identical with the ceaseless vital 
effort of human nature itself. 

Now, can it be denied, that a certain approach to 
equality, at any rate a certain reduction of signal 
inequalities, is a natural, instinctive demand of that 
impulse which drives society as a whole, — no longer 
individuals and limited classes only, but the mass of 
a community, — to develop itself with the utmost 
possible fulness and freedom 1 Can it be denied, 
that to live in a society of equals tends in general to 
make a man's spirits expand, and his faculties work 
easily and actively; while, to live in a society of 
superiors, although it may occasionally be a very good 
discipline, yet in general tends to tame the spirits and 
to make the play of the faculties less secure and 
active ? Can it be denied, that to be heavily over- 
shadowed, to be profoundly insignificant, has, on the 
whole, a depressing and benumbing effect on the 
character? I know that some individuals react 
against the strongest impediments, and owe success 
and greatness to the efforts which they are thus 
forced to make. But the question is not about 
individuals. The question is about the common 
bulk of mankind, persons without extraordinary gifts 
or exceptional energy, and who will ever require, in 
order to make the best of themselves, encouragement 
and directly favouring circumstances. Can any one 
deny, that for these the spectacle, when they would 
rise, of a condition of splendour, grandeur, and cul- 
ture, which they cannot possibly reach, has the effect 
of making them flag in spirit, and of disposing them 
to sink despondingly back into their own condition 1 



I.] DEMOCRACY. 9 

Can any one deny, that the knowledge how poor and 
insignificant the best condition of improvement and 
culture attainable by them must be esteemed by a 
class incomparably richer-endowed, tends to cheapen 
this modest possible amelioration in the account of 
those classes also for whom it would be relatively a 
real progress, and to disenchant their imaginations 
with it ^ It seems to me impossible to deny this. 
And therefore a philosophic observer,^ with no love 
for democracy, but rather with a terror of it, has 
been constrained to remark, that " the common people 
is more uncivilised in aristocratic countries than in 
any others;" because there "the lowly and the poor 
feel themselves, as it were, overwhelmed with the 
weight of their own inferiority." He has been con- 
strained to remark,^ that '^ there is such a thing as a 
manly and legitimate passion for equality, prompting 
men to desire to be, all of them, in the enjoyment of 
power and consideration." And, in France, that 
very equality, which is by us so impetuously decried, 
while it has by no means improved (it is said) the 
upper classes of French society, has undoubtedly 
given to the lower classes, to the body of the common 
people, a self-respect, an enlargement of spirit, a con- 
sciousness of counting for something in their country's 
action, which has raised them in the scale of humanity. 
The common people, in France, seems to me the 
soundest part of the French nation. They seem to 
me more free from the two opposite degradations of 

1 M. de Tocqueville. See his Democratic en Amerique (edit, 
of 1835), vol. i. p. 11. "Le peuple est plus grossier dans les 
pays aristocratiques que partout ailleurs, Dans ces lieux, oil 
se recontrent des hommes si forts et si riclies, les faibles et les 
pauvres se sentent comme accables de leur bassesse ; ne decou- 
vrant aucun point par lequel ils puissent regagner I'egalite, ils 
desesperent entierement d'eux-memes, et se laissent tomber au- 
dessoiis de la dignite humaine." 

2 Democratie en Amirique, vol. i. p. 60. 



ly 



10 MIXED ESSAYS. [r. 

multitudes, brutality and servility, to have a more 
developed human life, more of what distinguishes 
elsewhere the cultured classes from the vulgar, than 
the common people in any other country with which 
I am acquainted. 

I do not say that grandeur and prosperity may 
not be attained by a nation divided into the most 
widely distinct classes, and presenting the most 
signal inequalities of rank and fortune. I do not 
say that great national virtues may not be developed 
in it. I do not even say that a popular order, 
accepting this demarcation of classes as an eternal 
providential arrangement, not questioning the natural 
right of a superior order to lead it, content within 
its own sphere, admiring the grandeur and high- 
mindedness of its ruling class, and catching on its 
own spirit some reflex of what it thus admires, may 
not be a happier body, as to the eye of the 
imagination it is certainly a more beautiful body, 
than a popular order, pushing, excited, and pre- 
sumptuous j a popular order, jealous of recognising 
fixed superiorities, petulantly claiming to be as good 
as its betters, and tastelessly attiring itself with the 
fashions and designations which have become unalter- 
ably associated with a wealthy and refined class, and 
which, tricking out those who have neither wealth 
nor refinement, are ridiculous. But a popular order 
of that old-fashioned stamp exists now only for the 
imagination. It is not the force with which modern 
society has to reckon. Such a body may be a sturdy, 
honest, and sound-hearted lower class j but it is not 
a democratic people. It is not that power, which at 
the present day in all nations is to be found existing ; 
in some, has obtained the mastery ; in others, is yet 
in a state of expectation and preparation. 

The power of France in Europe is at this day 



I.] DEMOCKACY. 11 

mainly owing to the completeness with which she 
has organised democratic institutions. The action of 
the French State is excessive ; but it is too little 
understood in England that the French people has 
adopted this action for its own purposes, has in great 
measure attained those purposes by it, and owes to 
its having done so the chief part of its influence in 
Europe. The growing power in Europe is democracy ; 
and France has organised democracy with a certain 
indisputable grandeur and success. The ideas of 
1789 were working everywhere in the eighteenth 
century ; but it was because in France the State 
adopted them that the French Eevolution became an 
historic epoch for the world, and France the lode-star 
of Continental democracy. Her airs of superiority 
and her overweening pretensions come from her sense 
of the power which she derives from this cause. 
Every one knows how Frenchmen proclaim France 
to be at the head of civilisation, the French army to 
be the soldier of God, Paris to be the brain of Europe, 
and so on. All this is, no doubt, in a vein of sufficient 
fatuity and bad taste ; but it means, at bottom, that 
France believes she has so organised herself as to 
facilitate for all members of her society full and free 
expansion ; that she believes herself to have re- 
modelled her institutions with an eye to reason 
rather than custom, and to right rather than fact ; it 
means, that she believes the other peoples of Europe 
to be preparing themselves, more or less rapidly, for 
a like achievement, and that she is conscious of her 
power and influence upon them as an initiatress and 
example. In this belief there is a part of truth and 
a part of delusion. I think it is more profitable for 
a Frenchman to consider the part of delusion con- 
tained in it ; for an Englishman, the part of truth. 
It is because aristocracies almost inevitably fail to 



12 MIXED ESSAYS. [i. 

appreciate justly, or even to take into their mind, 
the instinct pushing the masses towards expansion 
and fuller life, that they lose their hold over them. 
It is the old story of the incapacity of aristocracies 
for ideas ; the secret of their want of success in 
modern epochs. The people treats them with 
flagrant injustice, when it denies all obligation to 
them. They can, and often do, impart a high spirit, 
a fine ideal of grandeur, to the people ; thus they lay 
the foundations of a great nation. But they leave 
the people stiU the multitude, the crowd ; they have 
small belief, in the power of the ideas which are its 
life. Themselves a power reposing on all which is 
most solid, material, and visible, they are slow to 
attach any great importance to influences impalpable, 
spiritual, and viewless. Although, therefore, a dis- 
interested looker-on might often be disposed, seeing 
what has actually been achieved by aristocracies, to 
wish to retain or replace them in their preponderance, 
rather than commit a nation to the hazards of a new 
and untried future ; yet the masses instinctively feel 
that they can never consent to this without renounc- 
ing the inmost impulse of their being ; and that they 
should make such a renunciation cannot seriously be 
expected of them. Except on conditions which make 
its expansion, in the sense understood by itself, fully 
possible, democracy will never frankly ally itself with 
aristocracy ; and on these conditions perhaps no aris- 
tocracy will ever frankly ally itself with it. Even 
the English aristocracy, so politic, so capable of com- 
promises, has shown no signs of being able so to 
transform itself as to render such an alliance possible. 
The reception given by the Peers to the bill for estab- 
lishing life-peerages was, in this respect, of ill omen. 
The separation between aristocracy and democracy 
will probably, therefore, go on still widening. 



I.] DEMOCEACY. 13 

And it must in fairness be added, that as in one 
most important part of general human culture, — 
openness to ideas and ardour for them, — aristocracy 
is less advanced than democracy, to replace or keep 
the latter under the tutelage of the former would in 
some respects be actually unfavourable to the pro- 
gress of the world. At epochs when new ideas are 
powerfully fermenting in a society, and profoundly 
changing its spirit, aristocracies, as they are in general 
not long suffered to guide it without question, so are 
they by nature not well fitted to guide it intelligently. 

In England, democracy has been slow in developing 
itself, having met with much to withstand it, not only 
in the worth of the aristocracy, but also in the fine 
qualities of the common people. The aristocracy has 
been more in sympathy with the common people than 
perhaps any other aristocracy. It has rarely given 
them great umbrage ; it has neither been frivolous, 
so as to provoke their contempt, nor impertinent, so 
as to provoke their irritation. Above all, it has in 
general meant to act with justice, according to its 
own notions of justice. Therefore the feeling of 
admiring deference to such a class was more deep- 
rooted in the people of this country, more cordial, 
and more persistent, than in any people of the 
Continent. But, besides this, the vigour and high 
spirit of the English common people bred in them a 
self-reliance which disposed each man to act individu- 
ally and independently ; and so long as this disposition 
prevails through a nation divided into classes, the 
predominance of an aristocracy, of the class contain- 
ing the greatest and strongest individuals of the 
nation, is secure. Democracy is a force in which the 
concert of a great number of men makes up for the 
weakness of each man taken by himself; democracy 
accepts a certain relative rise in their condition, 



14 MIXED ESSAYS. [i. 

obtainable by tbis concert for a great number, as 
something desirable in itself, because though this is 
undoubtedly far below grandeur, it is yet a good 
deal above insignificance. A very strong, self-reliant 
people neither easily learns to act in concert, nor 
easily brings itself to regard any middling good, any 
good short of the best, as an object ardently to be 
coveted and striven for. It keeps its eye on the 
grand prizes, and these are to be won only by dis- 
tancing competitors, by getting before one's comrades, 
by succeeding all by one's self; and so long as a 
people works thus individually, it does not work 
democratically. The English people has all the 
qualities which dispose a people to work individually; 
may it never lose them ! A people without the salt of 
these qualities, relying wholly on mutual co-operation, 
and proposing to itself second-rate ideals, would 
arrive at the pettiness and stationariness of China. 
But the English people is no longer so entirely ruled 
by them as not to show visible beginnings of demo- 
cratic action ; it becomes more and more sensible to 
the irresistible seduction of democratic ideas, promising 
to each individual of the multitude increased self- 
respect, and expansion with the increased importance 
and authority of the multitude to which he belongs, 
with the diminished preponderance of the aristocratic 
class above him. 

While the habit and disposition of deference are 
thus dying out among the lower classes of the 
English nation, it seems to me indisputable that the 
advantages which command deference, that eminent 
superiority in high feeling, dignity, and culture, 
tend to diminish among the highest class. I shall not 
be suspected of any inclination to underrate the 
aristocracy of this country. I regard it as the 
worthiest, as it certainly has been the most success- 



i.l DEMOCRACY. 15 

ful aristocracy, of wliicli history makes record. If it 
has not been able to develop excellences which do 
not belong to the nature of an aristocracy, yet it has 
been able to avoid defects to which the nature of an 
aristocracy is peculiarly prone. But I cannot read 
the history of the flowering time of the English 
aristocracy, the eighteenth century, and then look at 
this aristocracy in our own century, without feeling 
that there has been a change. I am not now think- 
ing of private and domestic virtues, of morality, of 
decorum. Perhaps mth respect to these there has 
in this class, as in society at large, been a change for 
the better. I am thinking of those public and con- 
spicuous virtues by which the multitude is captivated 
and led, — lofty spirit, commanding character, exquisite 
culture. It is true that the advance of all classes in 
culture and refinement may make the culture of one 
class, which, isolated, appeared remarkable, appear 
so no longer ; but exquisite culture and great dignity 
are always something rare and striking, and it is 
the distinction of the English aristocracy, in the 
eighteenth century, that not only was their culture 
something rare by comparison with the rawness of 
the masses, it was something rare and admirable in 
itself. It is rather that this rare culture of the 
highest class has actually somewhat declined,^ than 
that it has come to look less by juxtaposition with 
the augmented culture of other classes. 

Probably democracy has something to answer for 

1 This vnR appear doubtful to no one well acquainted witli 
the literature and memoirs of the last century. To give but 
two illustrations out of a thousand. Let the reader refer to 
the anecdote told by Robert Wood in his Ussay on the Genius 
of Homer (London, 1775), p. vii. and to Lord Chesterfield's 
Letters (edit, of 1845), vol. i. pp. 115, 143 ; vol. ii. p. 54 ; and 
then say, whether the culture there indicated as the culture of 
a class has maintained itself at that level. 



16 MIXED ESSAYS. [r. 

in this falling off of her rival. To feel itself raised 
on high, venerated, followed, no doubt stimulates a 
fine nature to keep itself worthy to be followed, 
venerated, raised on high ; hence that lofty maxim, 
noblesse oblige. To feel its culture something precious 
and singular, makes such a nature zealous to retain 
and extend it. The elation and energy thus fostered 
by the sense of its advantages, certainly enhances 
the worth, strengthens the behaviour, and quickens 
all the active powers of the class enjoying it. Possunt 
quia posse videntur. The removal of the stimulus a 
little relaxes their energy. It is not so much that 
they sink to be somewhat less than themselves, as 
that they cease to be somewhat more than them- 
selves. But, however this may be, whencesoever the 
change may proceed, I cannot doubt that in the 
aristocratic virtue, in the intrinsic commanding force 
of the English upper class, there is a diminution. 
Eelics of a great generation are still, perhaps, to be 
seen amongst them, surviving exemplars of noble 
manners and consummate culture; but they disappear 
one after the other, and no one of their kind takes 
their place. At the very moment when democracy 
becomes less and less disposed to follow and to 
admire, aristocracy becomes less and less qualified 
to command and to captivate. 

On the one hand, then, the masses of the people 
in this country are preparing to take a much more 
active part than formerly in controlling its destinies ; 
on the other hand, the aristocracy (using this word 
in the widest sense, to include not only the nobility 
and landed gentry, but also those reinforcements 
from the classes bordering upon itself, which this 
class constantly attracts and assimilates), while it is 
threatened with losing its hold on the rudder of govern- 
ment, its power to give to public affairs its own bias 



<t 



I.] DEMOCEACY. 17 

and direction, is losing also that influence on the 
spirit and character of the people which it long 
exercised. 

I know that this will be warmly denied by some 
persons. Those who have grown up amidst a certain 
state of things, those whose habits, and interests, and 
affections, are closely concerned with its continuance, 
are slow to believe that it is not a part of the order 
of nature, or that it can ever come to an end. But 
I think that what I have here laid down will not 
appear doubtful either to the most competent and 
friendly foreign observers of this country, or to those 
Englishmen who, clear of all influences of class or 
party, have applied themselves steadily to see the 
tendencies of their nation as they really are. Assum- 
ing it to be true, a great number of considerations 
are suggested by it ; but it is my purpose here to 
insist upon one only. 

That one consideration is : On what action may 
we rely to replace, for some time at any rate, that 
action of the aristocracy upon the people of this 
country, which we have seen exercise an influence in 
many respects elevating and beneficial, but which is 
rapidly, and from inevitable causes, ceasing 1 In 
other words, and to use a short and significant 
modern expression which every one understands, 
what influence may help us to prevent the English 
people from becoming, with the growth of democracy, 
Americanised ? I confess I am disposed to answer : 
On the action of the State. 

I know what a chorus of objectors will be ready. 
One will say : Eather repair and restore the influence 
of aristocracy. Another will say : It is not a bad 
thing, but a good thing, that the English people 
should be Americanised. But the most formidable 
and the most widely entertained objection, by far, 
VOL. IV. C 



18 MIXED ESSAYS. [i. 

will be tliat which founds itself upon the present 
actual state of things in another country ; which 
says : Look at France ! there you have a signal 
example of the alliance of democracy with a powerful 
State-action, and see how it works. 

This last and principal objection I will notice at 
once. I have had occasion to touch upon the first 
already, and upon the second I shall touch presently. 
It seems to me, then, that one may save one's self 
from much idle terror at names and shadows if one 
will be at the pains to remember what different 
conditions the different character of two nations 
must necessarily impose on the operation of any 
principle. That which operates noxiously in one, 
may operate wholesomely in the other ; because the 
unsound part of the one's character may be yet- 
further inflamed and enlarged by it, the unsound 
part of the other's may find in it a corrective and an 
abatement. This is the great use which two unlike 
characters may find in observing each other. Neither 
is likely to have the other's faults, so each may 
safety adopt as much as suits him of the other's 
qualities. If I were a Frenchman I should never be 
weary of admiring the independent, individual, local 
habits of action in England, of directing attention to 
the evils occasioned in France by the excessive action 
of the State ; for I should be very sure that, say 
what I might, the part of the State would never be 
too small in France, nor that of the individual too 
large. Being an Englishman, I see nothing but good 
in freely recognising the coherence, rationality, and 
efficaciousness which characterise the strong State- 
action of France, of acknowledging the want of 
method, reason, and result which attend the feeble 
State -action of England; because I am very sure 
that, strengthen in England the action of the State 



I.] DEMOCRACY. 19 

as one may, it will always find itself sufficiently 
controlled. But when either the Constitutionnel sneers 
at the do-little talkativeness of parliamentary govern- 
ment, or when the Morning Star inveighs against the 
despotism of a centralised administration, it seems to 
me that they lose their labour, because they are 
hardening themselves against dangers to which they 
are neither of them liable. Both the one and the 
other, in plain truth, 

** Compound for sins they are inclined to, 
By damning those they have no mind to." 

They should rather exchange doctrines one with the 
other, and each might thus, perhaps, be profited. 

So that the exaggeration of the action of the 
State, in France, furnishes no reason for absolutely 
refusing to enlarge the action of the State in 
England ; because the genius and temper of the people 
of this country are such as to render impossible that 
exaggeration which the genius and temper of the 
French rendered easy. There is no danger at all 
that the native independence and indi^ddualism of 
the English character will ever belie itself, and 
become either weakly prone to lean on others, or 
blindly confiding in them. 

English democracy runs no risk of being over- 
mastered by the State ; it is almost certain that it 
will throw oflp the tutelage of aristocracy. Its real 
danger is, that it will have far too much its own 
way, and be left far too much to itself. " What harm 
will there be in that?" say some; "are we not a 
self-governing people 1" I answer : " We have never, 
yet been a self-governing democracy, or anything like 
it," The difficulty for democracy is, how to find and 
keep high ideals. The individuals who compose it 
are, the bulk of them, persons who need to follow 



20 MIXED ESSAYS. [i. 

an ideal, not to set one ; and one ideal of greatness, 
high feeling, and fine culture, which an aristocracy 
once supplied to them, they lose by the very fact of 
ceasing to be a lower order and becoming a demo- 
cracy. Nations are not truly great solely because 
the individuals composing them are numerous, free, 
and active ; but they are great when these numbers, 
this freedom, and this activity are employed in the 
service of an ideal higher than that of an ordinary 
man, taken by himself. Our society is probably 
destined to become much more democratic ; who or 
what will give a high tone to the nation then ? That 
is the grave question. 

The greatest men of America, her Washingtons, 
Hamiltons, Madisons, well understanding that aristo- 
cratical institutions are not in all times and places 
possible j well perceiving that in their Republic there 
was no place for these ; comprehending, therefore, 
that from these that security for national dignity and 
greatness, an ideal commanding popular reverence, 
was not to be obtained, but knowing that this ideal 
was indispensable, would have been rejoiced to found 
a substitute for it in the dignity and authority of the 
State. They deplored the weakness and insignificance 
of the executive power as a calamity. When the 
inevitable course of events has made our self-govern- 
ment something really like that of America, when it 
has removed or weakened that security for national 
dignity, which we possessed in aristocracy, will the 
substitute of the State be equally wanting to us ? K 
it is, then the dangers of America will really be ours ; 
the dangers which come from the multitude being in 
power, with no adequate ideal to elevate or guide 
the multitude. 

It would really be wasting time to contend at 
length, that to give more prominence to the idea of 



I.] DEMOCEACY. 21 

the State is now possible in this country, without 
endangering liberty. In other countries the habits 
and dispositions of the people may be such that the 
State, if once it acts, may be easily suffered to usurp 
exorbitantly ; here they certainly are not. Here the 
people will always sufficiently keep in mind that any 
public authority' is a trust delegated by themselves, 
for certain purposes, and with certain limits ; and if 
that authority pretends to an absolute, independent 
character, they will soon enough (and very rightly) 
remind it of its error. Here there can be no question 
of a paternal government, of an irresponsible exe- 
cutive power, professing to act for the people's good, 
but without the people's consent, and, if necessary, 
against the people's wishes ; here no one dreams of 
removing a single constitutional control, of abolishing 
a single safeguard for securing a correspondence 
between the acts of government and the will of the 
nation. The question is, whether, retaining all its 
power of control over a government which should 
abuse its trust, the nation may not now find advan- 
tage in voluntarily allowing to it purposes somewhat 
ampler, and limits somewhat wider within which to 
execute them, than formerly ; whether the nation 
may not thus acquire in the State an ideal of high 
reason and right feeling, representing its best self, 
commanding general respect, and forming a rallying- 
point for the intelligence and for the worthiest 
instincts of the community, which will herein find a 
true bond of union. 

I am convinced that if the worst mischiefs of 
democracy ever happen in England, it will be, not 
because a new condition of things has come upon us 
unforeseen, but because, though we all foresaw it, our 
efforts to deal with it were in the wrong direction. 
At the present time, almost every one believes in the 



22 MIXED ESSAYS. [i. 

growth of democracy, almost every one talks of it, 
almost every one laments it; but the last thing 
people can be brought to do is to make timely prepara- 
tion for it. Many of those who, if they would, could 
do most to forward this work of preparation, are 
made slack and hesitating by the belief that, after all, 
in England, things may probably never go very far ; 
that it will be possible to keep much more of the 
past than speculators say. Others, with a more 
robust faith, think that all democracy wants is 
vigorous putting-down; and that, with a good will 
and strong hand, it is perfectly possible to retain or 
restore the whole system of the Middle Ages. 
Others, free from the prejudices of class and position 
which warp the judgment of these, and who would, 
I believe, be the first and greatest gainers by 
strengthening the hands of the State, are averse from 
doing so by reason of suspicions and fears, once 
perfectly well-grounded, but, in this age and in the 
present circumstances, well-grounded no longer. 

I speak of the middle classes. I have already 
shown how it is the natural disposition of an 
aristocratical class to view with jealousy the develop- 
ment of a considerable State -power. But this 
disposition has in England found extraordinary 
favour and support in regions not aristocratical, — 
from the middle classes ; and, above all, from the 
kernel of these classes, the Protestant Dissenters. 
And for a very good reason. In times when passions 
ran high, even an aristocratical executive was easily 
stimulated into using, for the gratification of its 
friends and the abasement of its enemies, those 
administrative engines which, the moment it chose 
to stretch its hand forth, stood ready for its grasp. 
Matters of domestic concern, matters of religious 
profession and religious exercise, offered a peculiar 



I.] DEMOCRACY. 23 

field for an intervention gainful and agreeable to 
friends, injurious and irritating to enemies. Such an 
intervention was attempted and practised. Govern- 
ment lent its machinery and authority to the 
aristocratical and ecclesiastical party, which it 
regarded as its best support. The party which 
suffered comprised the flower and strength of that 
middle class of society, always very flourishing and 
robust in this country. That powerful class, from 
this specimen of the administrative activity of 
government, conceived a strong antipathy against all 
intervention of the State in certain spheres. An 
active, stringent administration in those spheres, 
meant at that time a High Church and Prelatic 
administration in them, an administration galling to 
the Puritan party and to the middle class ; and this 
aggrieved class had naturally no proneness to draw 
nice philosophical distinctions between State-action 
in these spheres, as a thing for abstract consideration, 
and State-action in them as they practically felt it 
and supposed themselves likely long to feel it, guided 
by their adversaries. In the minds of the English 
middle class, therefore. State-action in social and 
domestic concerns became inextricably associated 
with the idea of a Conventicle Act, a Five-Mile Act, 
an Act of Uniformity. Their abhorrence of such a 
State-action as this they extended to State-action in 
general j and, having never known a beneficent and 
just State-power, they enlarged their hatred of a 
cruel and partial State-power, the only one they had 
ever known, into a maxim that no State-power was 
to be trusted, that the least action, in certain 
provinces, was rigorously to be denied to the State, 
whenever this denial was possible. 

Thus that jealousy of an important, sedulous, 
energetic executive, natural to grandees unwilling to 



24 MIXED ESSAYS. [i. 

suffer their personal authority to be circumscribed, 
their individual grandeur to be eclipsed, by the 
authority and grandeur of the State, became rein- 
forced in this country by a like sentiment among 
the middle classes, who had no such authority or 
grandeur to lose, but who, by a hasty reasoning, had 
theoretically condemned for ever an agency which 
they had practically found at times oppressive. 
Leave us to ourselves ! magnates and middle classes 
alike cried to the State. Not only from those who 
were full and abounded went up this prayer, but 
also from those whose condition admitted of great 
amelioration. Not only did the whole repudiate the 
physician, but also those who were sick. 

For it is evident, that the action of a diligent, an 
impartial, and a national government, while it can 
do little to better the condition, already fortunate 
enough, of the highest and richest class of its people, 
can really do much, by institution and regulation, to 
better that of the middle and lower classes. The 
State can bestow certain broad collective benefits, 
which are indeed not much if compared with the 
advantages already possessed by individual grandeur, 
but which are rich and valuable if compared with 
the make-shifts of mediocrity and poverty. A good 
thing meant for the many cannot well be so exquisite 
as the good things of the few ; but it can easily, if it 
comes from a donor of great resources and wide 
power, be incomparably better than what the many 
could, unaided, provide for themselves. 

In all the remarks which I have been making, I 
have hitherto abstained from any attempt to suggest 
a positive application of them. I have limited my- 
self to simply pointing out in how changed a world 
of ideas we are living; I have not sought to go 
further, and to discuss in what particular manner the 



I.] DEMOCKACY. 25 

world of facts is to adapt itself to this changed world 
of ideas. This has been my rule so far ; but from 
this rule I shall here venture to depart, in order to 
dwell for a moment on a matter of practical institu- 
tion, designed to meet new social exigencies : on the 
intervention of the State in public education. 

The public secondary schools of France, decreed 
by the Revolution and established under the Con- 
sulate, are said by many good judges to be inferior 
to the old colleges. By means of the old colleges and 
of private tutors, the French aristocracy could procure 
for its children (so it is said, and very likely with 
truth) a better training than that which is now given 
in the lyceums. Yes ; but the boon conferred by the 
State, when it founded the lyceums, was not for the 
aristocracy; it was for the vast middle class of 
Frenchmen. This class, certainly, had not already 
the means of a better training for its children, before 
the State interfered. This class, certainly, would 
not have succeeded in procuring by its own efforts a 
better training for its children^ if the State had not 
interfered. Through the intervention of the State 
this class enjoys better schools for its childi^en, not 
than the great and rich enjoy (that is not the ques- 
tion), but than the same class enjoys in any country 
where the State has not interfered to found them. 
The lyceums may not be so good as Eton or Harrow ; 
but they are a great deal better than a Classical and 
Commercial Academy. 

The aristocratic classes in England may, perhaps, 
be well content to rest satisfied with their Eton and 
Harrow. The State is not likely to do better for 
them. Nay, the superior confidence, spirit, and style, 
engendered by a training in the great public schools, 
constitute for these classes a real privilege, a real 
engine of command, which they might, if they were 



26 MIXED ESSAYS. [i. 

selfish, be sorry to lose by the establishment of 
schools great enough to beget a like spirit in the 
classes below them. But the middle classes in Eng- 
land have every reason not to rest content with their 
private schools ; the State can do a great deal better 
for them. By giving to schools for these classes a 
public character, it can bring the instruction in them 
under a criticism which the stock of knowledge and 
judgment in our middle classes is not of itself at 
present able to supply. By giving to them a national 
character, it can confer on them a greatness, and a 
noble spirit, which the tone of these classes is not of 
itself at present adequate to impart. Such schools 
would soon prove notable competitors with the exist- 
ing public schools ; they would do these a great 
service by stimulating them, and making them look 
into their own weak points more closely. Econo- 
mical, because with charges uniform and under severe 
revision, they would do a great service to that large 
body of persons who, at present, seeing that on the 
whole the best secondary instruction to be found is 
that of the existing public schools, obtain it for their 
children from a sense of duty, although they can ill 
afford it, and although its cost is certainly exorbitant. 
Thus the middle classes might, by the aid of the 
State, better their instruction, while still keeping its 
cost moderate. This in itself would be a gain ; but 
this gain would be slight in comparison with that of 
acquiring the sense of belonging to great and honour- 
able seats of learning, and of breathing in their youth 
the air of the best culture of their nation. This sense 
would be an educational influence for them of the 
highest value. It would really augment their self- 
respect and moral force ; it would truly fuse them 
with the class above, and tend to bring about for 
them the equality which they are entitled to desire. 



I.] DEMOCEACY. 27 

So it is not State-action in itself which the middle 
and lower classes of a nation ought to deprecate ; it 
is State-action exercised by a hostile class, and for 
their oppression. From a State-action reasonably, 
equitably, and nationally exercised, they may derive 
great benefit ; greater, by the very nature and 
necessity of things, than can be derived from this 
source by the class above them. For the middle or 
lower classes to obstruct such a State-action, to repel 
its benefits, is to play the game of their enemies, and to 
prolong for themselves a condition of real inferiority. 

This, I know, is rather dangerous ground to tread 
upon. The great middle classes of this country are 
conscious of no weakness, no inferiority ; they do not 
want any one to provide anything for them. Such as 
they are, they believe that the freedom and prosperity 
of England are their work, and that the future belongs 
to them. No one esteems them more than I do ; but 
those who esteem them most, and who most believe in 
their capabilities, can render them no better service 
than by pointing out in what they underrate their 
deficiencies, and how their deficiencies, if unremedied, 
may impair their future. They want culture and 
dignity ; they want ideas. Aristocracy has culture 
and dignity ; democracy has readiness for new ideas, 
and ardour for what ideas it possesses. Of these, 
our middle class has the last only : ardour for the 
ideas it already possesses. It believes ardently in 
liberty, it believes ardently in industry ; and, by its 
zealous belief in these two ideas, it has accomplished 
great things. What it has accomplished by its belief 
in industry is patent to all the world. The liberties of 
England are less its exclusive work than it supposes ; 
for these, aristocracy has achieved nearly as much. 
Still, of one inestimable part of liberty, liberty of 
thought, the middle class has been (without precisely 



28 MIXED ESSAYS. [r. 

intending it) the principal champion. The intellectual 
action of the Church of England upon the nation has 
been insignificant ; its social action has been great. 
The social action of Protestant Dissent, that genuine 
product of the English middle class, has not been 
civilising; its positive intellectual action has been in- 
significant; its negative intellectual action, — in so far 
as by strenuously maintaining for itself, against per- 
secution, liberty of conscience and the right of free 
opinion, it at the same time maintained and estab- 
lished this right as a universal principle,— has been 
invaluable. But the actual results of this negative 
intellectual service rendered by Protestant Dissent, — 
by the middle class, — to the whole community, great 
as they undoubtedly are, must not be taken for 
something which they are not. It is a very great 
thing to be able to think as you like ; but, after all, 
an important question remains : what you think. It 
is a fine thing to secure a free stage and no favour ; 
but, after all, the part which you play on that stage 
will have to be criticised. Now, all the liberty and 
industry in the world will not ensure these two 
things : a high reason and a fine culture. They may 
favour them, but they will not of themselves produce 
them ; they may exist without them. But it is by 
the appearance of these two things, in some shape or 
other, in the life of a nation, that it becomes some- 
thing more than an independent, an energetic, a 
successful nation, — that it becomes a great nation. 

In modern epochs the part of a high reason, of 
ideas, acquires constantly increasing importance in 
the conduct of the world's affairs. A fine culture is 
the complement of a high reason, and it is in the 
conjunction of both with character, with energy, that 
the ideal for men and nations is to be placed. It is 
common to hear remarks on the frequent divorce 



I.] DEMOCRACY. 29 

between culture and character, and to infer from 
this that culture is a mere varnish, and that character 
only deserves any serious attention. No error can 
be more fatal. Culture without character is, no 
doubt, something frivolous, vain, and weak; but 
character without culture is, on the other hand, 
something raw, blind, and dangerous. The most 
interesting, the most truly glorious peoples, are those 
in which the alliance of the two has been effected 
most successfully, and its result spread most widely. 
This is why the spectacle of ancient Athens has such 
profound interest for a rational man ; that it is the 
spectacle of the culture of a people. It is not an 
aristocracy, leavening with its own high spirit the 
multitude which it wields, but leaving it the unformed 
multitude still ; it is not a democracy, acute and 
energetic, but tasteless, narrow-minded, and ignoble ; 
it is the middle and lower classes in the highest 
development of their humanity that these classes 
have yet reached. It was the many who relished 
those arts who were not satisfied with less than 
those monuments. In the conversations recorded by 
Plato, or even by the matter-of-fact Xenophon, which 
for the free yet refined discussion of ideas have set 
the tone for the whole cultivated world, shopkeepers 
and tradesmen of Athens mingle as speakers. For 
any one but a pedant, this is why a handful of 
Athenians of two thousand years ago are more 
interesting than the millions of most nations our 
contemporaries. Surely, if they knew this, those 
friends of progress, who have confidently pronounced 
the remains of the ancient world to be so much lumber, 
and a classical education an aristocratic impertinence, 
might be inclined to reconsider their sentence. 

The course taken in the next fifty years by the 
middle classes of this nation will probably give a 



30 MIXED ESSAYS. [i. 

decisive turn to its history. If they will not seek 
the alliance of the State for their own elevation, if 
they go on exaggerating their spirit of individualism, 
if they persist in their jealousy of all governmental 
action, if they cannot learn that the antipathies and 
the shibboleths of a past age are now an anachronism 
for them — that will not prevent them, probably, 
from getting the rule of their country for a season, 
but they will certainly Americanise it. They will 
rule it by their energy, but they will deteriorate it 
by their low ideals and want of culture. In the 
decline of the aristocratical element, which in some 
sort supplied an ideal to ennoble the spirit of the 
nation and to keep it together, there will be no other 
element present to perform this service. It is of 
itself a serious calamity for a nation that its tone of 
feeling and grandeur of spirit should be lowered or 
dulled. But the calamity appears far more serious 
still when we consider that the middle classes, 
remaining as they are now, with their narrow, harsh, 
unintelligent, and unattractive spirit and culture, will 
almost certainly fail to mould or assimilate the masses 
below them, whose sympathies are at the present 
moment actually wider and more liberal than theirs. 
They arrive, these masses, eager to enter into posses- 
sion of the world, to gain a more vivid sense of their 
own life and activity. In this their irrepressible 
development, their natural educators and initiators 
are those immediately above them, the middle classes. 
If these classes cannot win their sympathy or give 
them their direction, society is in danger of falling 
into anarchy. 

Therefore, with all the force I can, I wish to urge 
upon the middle classes of this country, both that 
they might be very greatly profited by the action of 
the State, and also that they are continuing their 



I.] DEMOCRACY. 31 

opposition to such action out of an unfounded fear. 
But at the same time I say that the middle classes 
have the right, in admitting the action of govern- 
ment, to make the condition that this government 
shall be one of their own adoption, one that they 
can trust. To ensure this is now in their own 
power. If they do not as yet ensure this, they 
ought to do so, they have the means of doing so. 
Two centuries ago they had not; now they have. 
Having this security, let them now show themselves 
jealous to keep the action of the State equitable and 
rational, rather than to exclude the action of the 
State altogether. If the State acts amiss, let them 
check it, but let them no longer take it for granted 
that the State cannot possibly act usefully. 

The State — hut what is the State ? cry many. 
Speculations on the idea of a State abound, but 
these do not satisfy them j of that which is to have 
practical effect and power they require a plain 
account. The full force of the term, the State, as 
the fuU force of any other important term, no one 
will master without going a little deeply, without 
resolutely entering the world of ideas; but it is 
possible to give in very plain language an account 
of it sufficient for all practical purposes. The State 
is properly just what Burke called it — the nation in 
its collective and corporate character. The State is the 
representative acting-power of the nation ; the action 
of the State is the representative action of the nation. 
Nominally emanating from the Crown, as the ideal 
unity in which the nation concentrates itself, this 
action, by the constitution of our country, really 
emanates from the ministers of the Crown. It is 
common to hear the depreciators of State-action run 
through a string of ministers' names, and then say : 
" Here is really your State ; would you accept the 



32 MIXED ESSAYS. [i. 

action of these men as your own representative 
action ? In wliat respect is their judgment on 
national affaii's likely to be any better than that 
of the rest of the world ?" In the first place I 
answer : Even supposing them to be originally no 
better or wiser than the rest of the world, they 
have two great advantages from their position : 
access to almost boundless means of information, 
and the enlargement of mind which the habit of 
dealing ^ith great affairs tends to produce. Their 
position itself, therefore, if they are men of only 
average honesty and capacity, tends to give them a 
fitness for acting on behalf of the nation superior to 
that of other men of equal honesty and capacity who 
are not in the same position. This fitness may be 
yet further increased by treating them as persons on 
whom, indeed, a very grave responsibility has fallen, 
and from whom very much wiU be expected; — nothing 
less than the representing, each of them in his own 
department, under the control of Parliament, and 
aided by the suggestions of public opinion, the 
collective energy and intelligence of his nation. 
By treating them as men on whom all this devolves 
to do, to their honour if they do it well, to their 
shame if they do it ill, one probably augments their 
faculty of well-doing ; as it is excellently said : "To 
treat men as if they were better than they are, is 
the surest way to make them better than they are." 
But to treat them as if they had been shuffled into 
their places by a lucky accident, were most likely 
soon to be shuffled out of them again, and mean- 
while ought to magnify themselves and their office 
as little as possible ; to treat them as if they and 
their functions could without much inconvenience be 
quite dispensed with, and they ought perpetually to 
be admiring their own inconceivable good fortune in 



I.] DEMOCEACY. 33 

being permitted to discharge them ; — this is the way 
to paralyse all high effort in the executive govern- 
ment, to extinguish all lofty sense of responsibility ; 
to make its members either merely solicitous for the 
gross advantages, the emolument, and self-importance, 
which they derive from their offices, or else timid, 
apologetic, and self -mistrustful in filling them; in 
either case, formal and inefficient. 

But in the second place I answer : If the executive 
government is really in the hands of men no wiser 
than the bulk of mankind, of men whose action an 
intelligent man would be unwilling to accept as 
representative of his own action, whose fault is that? 
It is the fault of the nation itself, which, not being 
in the hands of a despot or an oligarchy, being free 
to control the choice of those who are to sum up and 
concentrate its action, controls it in such a manner 
that it allows to be chosen agents so little in its con- 
fidence, or so mediocre, or so incompetent, that it 
thinks the best thing to be done with them is to 
reduce their action as near as possible to a nullity. 
Hesitating, blundering, unintelligent, inefficacious, the 
action of the State may be ; but, such as it is, it is 
the collective action of the nation itself, and the 
nation is responsible for it. It is our own action 
which we suffer to be thus unsatisfactory. Nothing 
can free us from this responsibility. The conduct of 
our affairs is in our own power. To carry on into 
its executive proceedings the indecision, conflict, 
and discordance of its parliamentary debates, may 
be a natural defect of a free nation, but it is cer- 
tainly a defect ; it is a dangerous error to call it, 
as some do, a perfection. The want of concert, 
reason, and organisation in the State, is the want 
of concert, reason, and organisation in the collective 
nation. 

VOL. IV. D 



34 MIXED ESSAYS. [l. 

Inasmuch, therefore, as collective action is more 
efficacious than isolated individual efforts, a nation 
having great and complicated matters to deal with 
must greatly gain by employing the action of the 
State. Only, the State -power which it employs 
should be a power which really represents its best 
self, and whose action its intelligence and justice can 
heartily avow and adopt j not a power which reflects 
its inferior self, and of whose action, as of its own 
second-rate action, it has perpetually to be ashamed. 
To offer a worthy initiative, and to set a standard of 
rational and equitable action, — this is what the 
nation should expect of the State ; and the more the 
State fulfils this expectation, the more will it be 
accepted in practice for what in idea it must always 
be. People will not then ask the State, what title 
it has to commend or reward genius and merit, since 
commendation and reward imply an attitude of 
superiority, for it will then be felt that the State 
truly acts for the English nation ; and the genius of 
the English nation is greater than the genius of any 
individual, greater even than Shakspeare's genius, 
for it includes the genius of Newton also. 

I will not deny that to give a more prominent 
part to the State would be a considerable change in 
this country; that maxim^s once very sound, and 
habits once very salutary, may be appealed to against 
it. The sole question is, whether those maxims and 
habits are sound and salutary at this moment. A 
yet graver and more 'difficult change, — to reduce the 
all-effacing prominence of the State, to give a more 
prominent part to the individual, — is imperiously 
presenting itself to other countries. Both are the 
suggestions of one irresistible force, which is gradually 
making its way everywhere, removing old conditions 
and imposing new, altering long-fixed habits, under- 



I.] DEMOCEACY. 35 

mining venerable institutions, even modifying national 
character : the modern spirit. 

Undoubtedly we are drawing on towards great 
changes ; and for every nation the thing most need- 
ful is to discern clearly its own condition, in order -to 
know in what particular way it may best meet them. 
Openness and flexibility of mind are at such a time 
the first of virtues. Be ye ]_jerfed, said the Founder 
of Christianity; I count not myself to have ajyprehencled, 
said its greatest Apostle. Perfection "\^all never be 
reached j but to recognise a period of transformation 
when it comes, and to adapt themselves honestly and 
rationally to its laws, is perhaps the nearest approach 
to perfection of which men and nations are capable. 
No habits or attachments should prevent their trying 
to do this ; nor indeed, in the long run, can they. 
Human thought, which made all institutions, inevit- 
ably saps them, resting only in that which is absolute 
and eternal. 



II. 

EQUALITY.^ 

There is a maxim whicli we all know, which occurs 
in our copy-books, which occurs in that solemn and 
beautiful formulary against which the Nonconformist 
genius is just now so angrily chafing, — the Burial 
Service. The maxim is this : " Evil communications 
corrupt good manners." It is taken from a chapter 
of the First Epistle to the Corinthians; but originally 
it is a line of poetry, of Greek poetry. Quid Athenis 
et Hierosolymis ? asks a Father ; what have Athens 
and Jerusalem to do with one another 1 Well, at 
any rate, the Jerusalemite Paul, exhorting his con- 
verts, enforces what he is saying by a verse of 
Athenian comedy, — a verse, probably, from the great 
master of that comedy, a man unsurpassed for fine 
and just observation of human life, Menander. 
^Oeipovoriv yjOrj ^p-qcrO^ 6/>ttAtat KaKat — " Evil com- 
munications corrupt good manners." 

In that collection of single, sententious lines, 
printed at the end of Menander's fragments, where 
we now find the maxim quoted by St. Paul, there is 
another striking maxim, not alien certainly to the 
language of the Christian religion, but which has not 
passed into our copy-books : " Choose equality and 

1 Address delivered at the Royal Institution. 



II.] EQUALITY. 37 

flee greed." The same profound observer, who laid 
down the maxim so universally accepted by us that 
it has become commonplace, the maxim that evil 
communications corrupt good manners, laid down 
also, as a no less sure result of the accurate study of 
human life, this other maxim as well : " Choose 
equality and flee greed "- — 'la-orrjTa 8' alpov Kal TrAeov- 

Fleonexia, or greed, the wishing and trying for the 
bigger share, we know under the name of covetousness. 
We understand by covetousness something difl'erent 
from what pleonexia really means : we understand by 
it the longing for other people's goods : and covetous- 
ness, so understood, it is a commonplace of morals and 
of religion with us that we should shun. As to the 
duty of pursuing equality, there is no such consent 
amongst us. Indeed, the consent is the other way, 
the consent is against equality. Equality before the 
law we all take as a matter of course ; that is not the 
equality which we mean when we talk of equality. 
When we talk of equality, we understand social 
equality ; and for equality in this Frenchified sense 
of the term almost everybody in England has a hard 
word. About four years ago Lord Beaconsfield held 
it up to reprobation in a speech to the students at 
Glasgow ; — a speech so interesting, that being asked 
soon afterwards to hold a discourse at Glasgow, I said 
that if one spoke there at all at that time it would be 
impossible to speak on any other subject but equality. 
However, it is a great way to Glasgow, and I never 
yet have been able to go and speak there. 

But the testimonies against equality have been 
steadily accumulating from the date of Lord Beacons- 
field's Glasgow speech down to the present hour. 
Sir Erskine May winds up his new and important 
History of Democracy by saying: "France has aimed 



38 MIXED ESSAYS. [ii. 

at social equality. The fearful troubles through 
which she has passed have checked her prosperity, 
demoralised her society, and arrested the intellectual 
growth of her people." Mr. Froude, again, who is 
more his own master than I am, has been able to go 
to Edinburgh and to speak there upon equality. 
Mr. Froude told his hearers that equality splits a 
nation into a " multitude of disconnected units,"' that 
"the masses require leaders whom they can trust," and 
that " the natural leaders in a healthy country are 
the gentry." And only just before the History of 
Democracy came out, we had that exciting passage of 
arms between Mr. Lowe and Mr. Gladstone, where 
equality, poor thing, received blows from them both. 
Mr. Lowe declared that " no concession should be 
made to the cry for equality, unless it appears that 
the State is menaced with more danger by its refusal 
than by its admission. No such case exists now or 
ever has existed in this country." And Mr. Glad- 
stone replied that equality was so utterly unattractive 
to the people of this country, inequality was so dear 
to their hearts, that to talk of concessions being made 
to the cry for equality was absurd. " There is no 
broad political idea," says Mr. Gladstone quite truly, 
"which has entered less into the formation of the 
political system of this country than the love of 
equality." And he adds : " It is not the love of 
equality which has carried into every corner of the 
country the distinct undeniable popular preference, 
wherever other things are equal, for a man who is a 
lord over a man who is not. The love of freedom 
itself is hardly stronger in England than the love of 
aristocracy." Mr. Gladstone goes on to quote a 
saying of Sir William Molesworth, that with our 
people the love of aristocracy "is a religion." And 
he concludes in his copious and eloquent way : " Call 



II.] EQUALITY. 39 

this love of inequality by what name you please, — 
the complement of the love of freedom, or its nega- 
tive pole, or the shadow which the love of freedom 
casts, or the reverberation of its voice in the halls 
of the constitution, — it is an active, living, and life- 
giving power, which forms an inseparable essential 
element in our political habits of mind, and asserts 
itself at every step in the processes of our system." 

And yet, on the other side, we have a consum- 
mate critic of life like Menander, delivering, as if 
there were no doubt at all about the matter, the 
maxim : " Choose equality ! " An Englishman with 
any curiosity must surely be inclined to ask himself 
how such a maxim can ever have got established, 
and taken rank along with "Evil communications 
corrupt good manners." Moreover, we see that 
among the French, who have suffered so grievously, 
as we hear, from choosing equality, the most gifted 
spirits continue to believe passionately in it neverthe- 
less. " The human ideal, as well as the social ideal, 
is," says George Sand, "to achieve equality." She 
calls equality " the goal of man and the law of the 
future." She asserts that France is the most civilised 
of nations, and that its pre-eminence in civilisation it 
owes to equality. 

But Menander lived a long while ago, and George 
Sand was an enthusiast. Perhaps their differing 
from us about equality need not trouble us much. 
France, too, counts for but one nation, as England 
counts for one also. Equality may be a religion 
with the people of France, as inequality, we are told, 
is a religion with the people of England. But what 
do other nations seem to think about the matter ? 

Now, my discourse to-night is most certainly not 
meant to be a discjuisition on law, and on the rules 
of bequest. But it is evident that in the societies of 



40 MIXED ESSAYS. [ii. 

Europe, with a constitution of property such as that 
which the feudal Middle Age left them with, — a 
constitution of property full of inequality, — the state 
of the law of bequest shows us how far each society 
wishes the inequality to continue. The families in 
possession of great estates will not break them up if 
they can help it Such owners will do all they can, 
by entail and settlement, to prevent their successors 
from breaking them up. They will preserve in- 
equality. Freedom of bequest, then, the power of 
making entails and settlements, is sure, in an old 
European country like ours, to maintain inequality. 
And with us, who have the religion of inequality, the 
power of entailing and settling, and of willing property 
as one likes, exists, as is well known, in singular ful- 
ness, — greater fulness than in any country of the Con- 
tinent. The proposal of a measure such as the Real 
Estates Intestacy Bill is, in a country like ours, per- 
fectly puerile. A European country like ours, wishing 
not to preserve inequality but to abate it, can only do 
so by interfering with the freedom of bequest. This 
is what Turgot, the wisest of French statesmen, pro- 
nounced before the Revolution to be necessary, and 
what was done in France at the great Revolution. 
The Code Napoleon, the actual law of France, forbids 
entails altogether, and leaves a man free to dispose 
of but one-fourth of his property, of whatever kind, 
if he have three children or more, of one-third if he 
have two children, of one -half if he have but one 
child. Only in the rare case, therefore, of a man's 
having but one child, can that child take the whole 
of his father's property. If there are two children, 
two-thirds of the property must be equally divided 
between them ; if there are more than two, three- 
fourths. In this way has France, desiring equality, 
sought to bring equality about. 






II.] EQUALITY. 41 

Now the interesting point for us is, I say, to know 
how far other European communities, left in the 
same situation with us and with France, having 
immense inequahties of class and property created 
for them by the Middle Age, have dealt with these 
inequalities by means of the law of bequest. Do 
they leave bequest free, as we do ? then, like us, 
they are for inequality. Do they interfere with the 
freedom of bequest, as France does'? then, like France, 
they are for equality. And we shall be most in- 
terested, surely, by what the most civilised European 
communities do in this matter, — communities such 
as those of Germany, Italy, Belgium, Holland, Switzer- 
land. And among those communities we are most 
concerned, I think, with such as, in the conditions of 
freedom and of self-government which they demand 
for their life, are most like ourselves. Germany, for 
instance, we shall less regard, because the conditions 
which the Germans seem to accept for their life are 
so unlike what we demand for ours ; there is so much 
personal government there, so much jimJcerism, mili- 
tarism, officialism ; the community is so much more 
trained to submission than we could bear, so much 
more used to be, as the popular phrase is, sat upon. 
Countries where the community has more a will of 
its own, or can more show it, are the most important 
for our present purpose, — such countries as Belgium, 
Holland, Italy, Switzerland. Well, Belgium adopts 
purely and simply, as to bequest and inheritance, 
the provisions of the Code NapoUon. Holland adopts 
them purely and simply. Italy has adopted them 
substantially. Switzerland is a republic, where the 
general feeling against inequality is strong, and 
where it might seem less necessary, therefore, to 
guard against inequality by interfering with the 
power of bequest. Each Swiss canton has its own 



42 MIXED ESSAYS. [ii. 

law of bequest. In Geneva, Vaud, and Zurich, — 
perhaps the three most distinguished cantons, — the 
law is identical with that of France. In Berne, one- 
third is the fixed proportion which a man is free to 
dispose of by will ; the rest of his property must go 
among his children equally. In all the other cantons 
there are regulations of a like kind. Germany, I 
was saying, will interest us less than these freer 
countries. In Germany, — though there is not the 
English freedom of bequest, but the rule of the 
Eoman law prevails, the rule obliging the parent to 
assign a certain portion to each child, — in Germany 
entails and settlements in favour of an eldest son 
are generally permitted. But there is a remarkable 
exception. The Ehine countries, which in the early 
part of this century were under French rule, and 
which then received the Code Na;poUon, these countries 
refused to part with it when they were restored to 
Germany ; and to this day Ehenish Prussia, Rhenish 
Hesse, and Baden, have the French law of bequest, 
forbidding entails, and dividing property in the way 
we have seen. 

The United States of America have the English 
liberty of bequest. But the United States are, like 
Switzerland, a republic, with the republican sentiment 
for equality. Theirs is, besides, a new society j it 
did not inherit the system of classes and of property 
which feudalism established in Europe. The class 
by which the United States were settled was not a 
class with feudal habits and ideas. It is notorious 
that to acquire great landed estates and to entail 
them upon an eldest son, is neither the practice nor 
the desire of any class in America. I remember 
hearing it said to an American in England : " But, 
after all, you have the same freedom of bequest 
and inheritance as we have, and if a man to-morrow 



II.] EQUALITY. 43 

chose in your country to entail a great landed estate 
rigorously, what could you do?" The American 
answered : " Set aside the will on the ground of 
insanity." 

You see we are in a manner taking the votes for 
and against equality. We ought not to leave out 
our own colonies. In general they are, of course, 
like the United States of America, new societies. 
They have the English liberty of bequest. But they 
have no feudal past, and were not settled by a class 
with feudal habits and ideas. Nevertheless it happens 
that there have arisen, in Australia, exceedingly large 
estates, and that the proprietors seek to keep them 
together. And what have we seen happen lately? 
An Act has been passed which in effect inflicts a fine 
upon every proprietor who holds a landed estate of 
more than a certain value. The measure has been 
severely blamed in England ; to Mr. Lowe such a 
" concession to the cry for equality " appears, as we 
might expect, pregnant with warnings. At present 
I neither praise it nor blame it ; I simply count it 
as one of the votes for equality. And is it not a 
singular thing, I ask you, that while we have the 
religion of inequality, and can hardly bear to hear 
equality spoken of, there should be, among the 
nations of Europe which have politically most in 
common with us, and in the United States of 
America, and in our own colonies, this diseased 
appetite, as we must think it, for equality ? Per- 
haps Lord Beaconsfield may not have turned your 
minds to this subject as he turned mine, and what 
Menander or George Sand happens to have said may 
not interest you much ; yet surely, when you think 
of it, when you see what a practical revolt against 
inequality there is amongst so many people not so 
very unlike to ourselves, you must feel some curiosity 



44 MIXED ESSAYS. [ii. 

to sift the matter a little further, and may be not 
ill-disposed to follow me while I try to do so. 

I have received a letter from Clerkenwell, in 
which the writer reproaches me for lecturing about 
equality at this which he calls " the most aristocratic 
and exclusive place out." I am here because your 
secretary invited me. But I am glad to treat the 
subject of equality before such an audience as this. 
Some of you may remember that I have roughly 
divided our English society into Barbarians, Philis- 
tines, . Populace, each of them with their preposses- 
sions, and loving to hear what gratifies them. But I 
remarked at the same time, that scattered throughout 
all these classes were a certain number of generous 
and humane souls, lovers of man's perfection, detached 
from the prepossessions of the class to which they 
might naturally belong, and desirous that he who 
speaks to them should, as Plato says, not try to 
please his fellow-servants, but his true and legitimate 
master — the heavenly Gods. I feel sure that among 
the members and frequenters of an institution like 
this, such humane souls are apt to congregate in 
numbers. Even from the reproach which my Clerken- 
well friend brings against you of being too aristocratic, 
I derive some comfort. Only I give to the term 
aristocratic a rather wide extension. An accomplished 
American, much known and much esteemed in this 
country, the late Mr. Charles Sumner, says that 
what particularly struck him in England was the 
large class of gentlemen as distinct from the nobility, 
and the abundance amongst them of serious know- 
ledge, high accomplishment, and refined taste, — taste 
fastidious perhaps, says Mr. Sumner, to excess, but 
erring on virtue's side. And he goes on : "I do 
not know that there is much difference between the 
manners and social observances of the highest classes 



II.] EQUALITY. 45 

of England and those of the corresponding classes of 
France and Germany ; but in the rank immediately 
below the highest, — as among the professions, or 
military men, or literary men, — there you will find 
that the Englishmen have the advantage. They are 
better educated and better bred, more careful in their 
personal habits and in social conventions, more re- 
fined." Mr. Sumner's remark is just and important ; 
this large class of gentlemen in the professions, the 
services, literature, politics, — and a good contingent 
is now added from business also, — this large class, 
not of the nobility, but with the accomplishments 
and taste of an upper class, is something peculiar to 
England. Of this class I may probably assume that 
my present audience is in large measure composed. 
It is aristocratic in this sense, that it has the tastes 
of a cultivated class, a certain high standard of 
civilisation. Well, it is in its effects upon civilisation 
that equality interests me. And I speak to an 
audience with a high standard of civilisation. If I 
say that certain things in certain classes do not come 
up to a high standard of civilisation, I need not 
prove how and why they do not ; you will feel in- 
stinctively whether they do or no. If they do not, I 
need not prove that this is a bad thing, that a high 
standard of civilisation is desirable j you will in- 
stinctively feel that it is. Instead of calling this 
''the most aristocratic and exclusive place out," I 
conceive of it as a civilised place; and in speaking 
about civihsation half one's labour is saved when one 
speaks about it among those who are civilised. 

Politics are forbidden here ; but equality is not a 
question of English politics. The abstract right to 
equality may, indeed, be a question of speculative 
poHtics. French equality appeals to this abstract 
natural right as its support. It goes back to a 



46 MIXED ESSAYS. [ll. 

state of nature where all were equal, and supposes 
that " the poor consented," as Rousseau says, " to the 
existence of rich people," reserving always a natural 
right to return to the state of nature. It supposes 
that a child has a natural right to his equal share in 
his father's goods. The principle of abstract right, 
says Mr. Lowe, has never been admitted in England, 
and is false. I so entirely agree with him, that I 
run no risk of offending by discussing equality upon 
the basis of this principle. So far as I can sound 
human consciousness, I cannot, as I have often said, 
perceive that man is really conscious of any abstract 
natural rights at all. The natural right to have 
work found for one to do, the natural right to have 
food found for one to eat — rights sometimes so con- 
fidently and so indignantly asserted — seem to me 
quite baseless. It cannot be too often repeated : 
peasants and workmen have no natural rights, not 
one. Only we ought instantly to add, that kings 
and nobles have none either. If it is the sound 
English doctrine that all rights are created by law 
and are based on expediency, and are alterable as 
the public advantage may require, certainly that 
orthodox doctrine is mine. Property is created and 
maintained by law. It would disappear in that 
state of private war and scramble which legal society 
supersedes. Legal society creates, for the common 
good, the right of property; and for the common 
good that right is by legal society limitable. That 
property should exist, and that it should be held 
with a sense of security and with a power of dis- 
posal, may be taken, by us here at any rate, as a 
settled matter of expediency. AVith these conditions 
a good deal of inequality is inevitable. But that the 
power of disposal should be practically unlimited, that 
the inequality should be enormous, or that the degree 



II.] EQUALITY. 47 

of inequality admitted at one time should be admitted 
always^ — this is by no means so certain. The right 
of bequest was in early times, as Sir Henry Maine 
and Mr. Mill have pointed out, seldom recognised. 
In later times it has been limited in many countries 
in the way that we have seen ; even in England 
itself it is not formally quite unlimited. The question 
is one of expediency. It is assumed, I grant, with 
great unanimity amongst us, that our signal inequality 
of classes and property is expedient for our civilisa- 
tion and welfare. But this assumption, of which the 
distinguished personages who adopt it seem so sure 
that they think it needless to produce grounds for it, 
is just what we have to examine. 

Now, there is a sentence of Sir Erskine May, whom 
I have already quoted, which will bring us straight 
to the very point that I wish to raise. Sir Erskine 
May, after saying, as you have heard, that France 
has pursued social equality, and has come to fearful 
troubles, demoralisation, and intellectual stoppage by 
doing so, continues thus: "Yet is she high, if not 
the first, in the scale of civilised nations." Why, 
here is a curious thing, surely ! A nation pursues 
social equality, supposed to be an utterly false and 
baneful ideal ; it arrives, as might have been expected, 
at fearful misery and deterioration by doing so ; and 
yet, at the same time, it is high, if not the first, in 
the scale of civilised nations. What do we mean by 
civilised? Sir Erskine May does not seem to have 
asked himself the question, so we will try to answer 
it for ourselves. Civilisation is the humanisation of 
man in society. To be humanised is to comply with 
the true law of our human nature : servare modum^ 
finemque tenere, Naturamque seqioi, says Lucan; "to 
keep our measure, and to hold fast our end, and to 



48 MIXED ESSAYS. [ii. 

follow Nature." To be humanised is to make pro- 
gress toAvards this, our true and full humanity. And 
to be civilised is to make progress towards this in 
civil society ; in that civil society " without which," 
says Burke, " man could not by any possibility arrive 
at the perfection of which his nature is capable, nor 
even make a remote and faint approach to it." To 
be the most civilised of nations, therefore, is to be 
the nation which comes nearest to human perfection, 
in the state which that perfection essentially demands. 
And a nation which has been brought by the pursuit 
of social equality to moral deterioration, intellectual 
stoppage, and fearful troubles, is perhaps the nation 
which has come nearest to human perfection in that 
state which such perfection essentially demands ! 
Michelet himself, who would deny the demoralisation 
and the stoppage, and call the fearful troubles a sub- 
lime expiation for the sins of the whole world, could 
hardly say more for France than this. Certainly Sir 
Erskine May never intended to say so much. But 
into what a difficulty has he somehow run himself, 
and what a good action would it be to extricate him 
from it ! Let us see whether the performance of 
that good action may not also be a way of clearing 
our minds as to the uses of equality. 

When we talk of man's advance towards his full 
humanity, we think of an advance, not along one line 
only, but several. Certain races and nations, as we 
know, are on certain lines pre-eminent and represen- 
tative. The Hebrew nation was pre-eminent on one 
great line. " What nation," it was justly asked by 
their lawgiver, "hath statutes and judgments so 
righteous as the law which I set before you this day "? 
Keep therefore and do them ; for this is your wisdom 
and your understanding in the sight of the nations 
which shall hear all these statutes and say : Surely 



II.] EQUALITY. 49 

this great nation is a wise and understanding people ! " 
The Hellenic race was pre-eminent on other lines. 
Isocrates could say of Athens : " Our city has left the 
rest of the world so far behind in philosophy and 
eloquence, that those educated by Athens have become 
the teachers of the rest of mankind ; and so well has 
she done her part, that the name of Greeks seems no 
longer to stand for a race but to stand for intelligence 
itself, and they who share in our culture are called 
Greeks even before those who are merely of our own 
blood." The power of intellect and science, the 
power of beauty, the power of social life and man- 
ners, — these are what Greece so felt, and fixed, and 
may stand for. They are great elements in our 
humanisation. The power of conduct is another 
great element ; and this was so felt and fixed by 
Israel that we can never with justice refuse to permit 
Israel, in spite of all his shortcomings, to stand for it. 
So you see that in being humanised we have to 
move along several lines, and that on certain lines 
certain nations find their strength and take a lead. 
We may elucidate the thing yet further. Nations 
now existing may be said to feel or to have felt the 
power of this or that element in our humanisation so 
signally that they are characterised by it. No one 
who knows this country would deny that it is char- 
acterised, in a remarkable degree, by a sense of the 
power of conduct. Our feeling for religion is one 
part of this; our industry is another. What foreigners 
so much remark in us, — our public spirit, our love, 
amidst all our liberty, for public order and for stabi- 
lity, — are parts of it too. Then the power of beauty 
was so felt by the Italians that their art revived, 
as we know, the almost lost idea of beauty, and 
the serious and successful pursuit of it. Cardinal 
Antonelli, speaking to me about the education of the 

VOL. IV. E 



60 MIXED ESSAYS. [ii. 

common people in Eome, said that they were illiterate 
indeed, but whoever mingled with them at any public 
show, and heard them pass judgment on the beauty 
or ugliness of what came before them, — "^ brutto," 
"b bello," — would find that their judgment agreed 
admirably, in general, with just what the most culti- 
vated people would say. Even at the present time, 
then, the Italians are pre-eminent in feeling the power 
of beauty. The power of knowledge, in the same 
way, is eminently an influence with the Germans. 
This by no means implies, as is sometimes supposed, 
a high and fine general culture. What it implies is 
a strong sense of the necessity of knowing scientifically, 
as the expression is, the things which have to be 
known by us ; of knowing them systematically, by 
the regular and right process, and in the only real 
way. And this sense the Germans especially have. 
Finally, there is the power of social life and manners. 
And even the Athenians themselves, perhaps, have 
hardly felt this power so much as the French. 

Voltaire, in a famous passage where he extols the 
age of Louis the Fourteenth and ranks it with the 
chief epochs in the civilisation of our race, has to 
specify the gift bestowed on us by the age of Louis 
the Fourteenth, as the age of Pericles, for instance, 
bestowed on us its art and literature, and the Italian 
Eenascence its revival of art and literature. And 
Voltaire shows all his acuteness in fixing on the gift 
to name. It is not the sort of gift which we expect 
to see named. The great gift of the age of Louis the 
Fourteenth to the world, says Voltaire, was this : 
r esprit de socidtS, the spirit of society, the social spirit. 
And another French writer, looking for the good 
points in the old French nobility, remarks that this 
at any rate is to be said in their favour : they estab- 
lished a high and charming ideal of social intercourse 



I 



II.] EQUALITY. 51 

and manners, for a nation formed to profit by such 
an ideal, and which has profited by it ever since. 
And in America, perhaps, we see the disadvantages 
of ha\dng social equality before there has been any 
such high standard of social life and manners formed. 
We are not disposed in England, most of us, to 
attach all this importance to social intercourse and 
manners. Yet Burke says : " There ought to be a 
system of manners in every nation which a well- 
formed mind would be disposed to relish." And the 
power of social life and manners is truly, as we have 
seen, one of the great elements in our humanisation. 
Unless we have cultivated it, we are incomplete. 
The impulse for cultivating it is not, indeed, a moral 
impulse. It is by no means identical with the moral 
impulse to help our neighbour and to do him good. 
Yet in many ways it works to a like end. It brings 
men together, makes them feel the need of one 
another, be considerate of one another, understand 
one another. But, above all things, it is a promoter 
of equahty. It is by the humanity of their manners 
that men are made equal. " A man thinks to show 
himself my equal," says Goethe, "by being groh, — 
that is to say, coarse and rude ; he does not show 
himself my equal, he shows himself groiy But a 
community having humane manners is a community 
of equals, and in such a community great social 
inequalities have really no meaning, while they are 
at the same time a menace and an embarrassment to 
perfect ease of social intercourse. A community with 
the spirit of society is eminently, therefore, a com- 
munity with the spirit of equahty. A nation with a 
genius for society, like the French or the Athenians, 
is irresistibly drawn towards equality. From the 
first moment when the French people, with its con- 
genital sense for the power of social intercourse and 



52 MIXED ESSAYS. [ii. 

manners, came into existence, it was on the road to 
equality. When it had once got a high standard of 
social manners abundantly established, and at the 
same time the natural, material necessity for the 
feudal inequality of classes and property pressed upon 
it no longer, the French people introduced equality 
and made the French Eevolution. It was not the 
spirit of philanthropy which mainly impelled the 
French to that Eevolution, neither was it the spirit 
of envy, neither was it the love of abstract ideas, 
though all these did something towards it ; but what 
did most was the spirit of society. 

The well-being of the many comes out more and 
more distinctly, in proportion as time goes on, as the 
object we must pursue. An individual or a class, 
concentrating their efforts upon their own well-being 
exclusively, do but beget troubles both for others and 
for themselves also. ISTo individual life can be truly 
prosperous, passed, as Obermann says, in the midst 
of men who suffer; passSe au milieu des gSndrations 
qui souffrent. To the noble soul, it cannot be happy ; 
to the ignoble, it cannot be secure. Socialistic and 
communistic schemes have generally, however, a fatal 
defect ; they are content with too low and material a 
standard of well-being. That instinct of perfection, 
which is the master-power in humanity, always rebels 
at this, and frustrates the work. Many are to be 
made partakers of well-being, true ; but the ideal of 
well-being is not to be, on that account, lowered and 
coarsened. M. de Laveleye, the political economist, 
who is a Belgian and a Protestant, and whose testi- 
mony therefore we may the more readily take about 
France, says that France, being the country of Europe 
where the soil is more divided than anywhere except 
in Switzerland and Norway, is at the same time the 
country where material well-being is most widely 



II.] EQUALITY. 53 

spread, where wealth has of late years increased 
most, and where population is least outrunning the 
limits which, for the comfort and progress of the 
working classes themselves, seem necessary. This 
may go for a good deal. It supplies an answer to 
what Sir Erskine May says about the bad effects of 
equality upon French prosperity. But I will quote 
to you from Mr. Hamerton what goes, I think, for 
yet more. Mr. Hamerton is an excellent observer 
and reporter, and has lived for many years in France. 
He says of the French peasantry that they are ex- 
ceedingly ignorant. So they are. But he adds : 
" They are at the same time full of intelligence ; their 
manners are excellent, they have delicate perceptions, 
they have tact, they have a certain refinement which 
a brutalised peasantry could not possibly have. If 
you talk to one of them at his own home, or in his 
field, he will enter into conversation with you quite 
easily, and sustain his part in a perfectly becoming 
way, with a pleasant combination of dignity and quiet 
humour. The interval between him and a Kentish 
labourer is enormous." 

This is indeed worth your attention. Of course 
all mankind are, as Mr. Gladstone says, of our own 
flesh and blood. But you know how often it happens 
in England that a cultivated person, a person of the 
sort that Mr. Charles Sumner describes, talking to 
one of the lower class, or even of the middle class, 
feels, and cannot but feel, that there is somehow a 
wall of partition between himself and the other, that 
they seem to belong to two different worlds. Thoughts, 
feelings, perceptions, susceptibilities, language, man- 
ners, — everything is different. Whereas, with a 
French peasant, the most cultivated man may find 
himself in sympathy, may feel that he is talking to 
an equal. This is an experience which has been 



54 MIXED ESSAYS. [ii. 

made a thousand times, and which may be made 
again any day. And it may be carried beyond the 
range of mere conversation, it may be extended to 
things like pleasures, recreations, eating and drinking, 
and so on. In general the pleasures, recreations, 
eating and drinking of English people, when once 
you get below that class which Mr. Charles Sumner 
calls the class of gentlemen, are to one of that class 
unpalatable and impossible. In France there is not 
this incompatibility. Whether he mix with high or 
low, the gentleman feels himself in a world not alien 
or repulsive, but a world where people make the same 
sort of demands upon life, in things of this sort, which 
he himself does. In all these respects France is the 
country where the people, as distinguished from a 
wealthy refined class, most lives what we call a 
humane life, the life of civilised man. 

Of course, fastidious persons can and do pick holes 
in it. There is just now, in France, a noblesse newly 
revived, full of pretension, full of airs and graces and 
disdains j but its sphere is narrow, and out of its own 
sphere no one cares very much for it. There is a 
general equality in a humane kind of life. This is 
the secret of the passionate attachment with which 
France inspu-es all Frenchmen, in spite of her fearful 
troubles, her checked prosperity, her disconnected 
units, and the rest of it. There is so much of the 
goodness and agreeableness of life there, and for so 
many. It is the secret of her having been able to 
attach so ardently to her the German and Protestant 
people of Alsace, while we have been so little able to 
attach the Celtic and CathoHc people of Ireland. 
France brings the Alsatians into a social system so 
full of the goodness and agreeableness of life ; we 
offer to the Irish no such attraction. It is the secret, 
finally, of the prevalence which we have remarked in 



II.] EQUALITY. 65 

other continental countries of a legislation tending, 
like that of France, to social equality. The social 
system which equality creates in France is, in the 
eyes of others, such a giver of the goodness and 
agreeableness of life, that they seek to get the good- 
ness by getting the equality. 

Yet France has had her fearful troubles, as Sir 
Erskine May justly says. She suffers too, he adds, 
from demoralisation and intellectual stoppage. Let 
us admit, if he likes, this to be true also. His error 
is that he attributes all this to equality. Equality, 
as we have seen, has brought France to a really 
admirable and enviable pitch of humanisation in one 
important line. And this, the work of equality, is so 
much a good in Sir Erskine May's eyes, that he has 
mistaken it for the whole of which it is a part, frankly 
identifies it with civilisation, and is inclined to pro- 
nounce France the most civilised of nations. 

But we have seen how much goes to full humani- 
sation, to true civilisation, besides the power of social 
life and manners. There is the power of conduct, 
the power of intellect and knowledge, the power of 
beauty. The power of conduct is the greatest of all. 
And without in the least wishing to preach, I must 
observe, as a mere matter of natural fact and experi- 
ence, that for the power of conduct France has never 
had anything like the same sense which she has had for 
the power of social life and manners. Michelet, him- 
self a Frenchman, gives us the reason why the Re- 
formation did not succeed in France. It did not 
succeed, he says, because la France ne voulait pas de 
reforme morale — moral reform France would not have; 
and the Reformation was above all a moral movement. 
The sense in France for the power of conduct has not 
greatly deepened, I think, since. The sense for the 
power of intellect and knowledge has not been ade- 



56 MIXED ESSAYS. [ii. 

quate either. The sense for beauty has not been 
adequate. IntelHgence and beauty have been, in 
general, but so far reached, as they can be and are 
reached by men who, of the elements of perfect 
humanisation, lay thorough hold upon one only, — 
the power of social intercourse and manners. I speak 
of France in general ; she has had, and she has, indi- 
viduals who stand out and who form exceptions. 
AVell then, if a nation laying no sufficient hold upon 
the powers of beauty and knowledge, and a most 
failing and feeble hold upon the power of conduct, 
comes to demoralisation and intellectual stoppage and 
fearful troubles, we need not be inordinately surprised. 
What we should rather marvel at is the healing and 
bountiful operation of Nature, whereby the laying 
firm hold on one real element in our humanisation 
has had for France results so beneficent. 

And thus, when Sir Erskine May gets bewildered 
between France's equality and fearful troubles on the 
one hand, and the civilisation of France on the other, 
let us suggest to him that perhaps he is bewildered 
by his data because he combines them ill. France 
has not exemplary disaster and ruin as the fruits of 
equality, and at the same time, and independently of 
this, an exemplary civilisation. She has a large 
measure of happiness and success as the fruits of 
equality, and she has a very large measure of dangers 
and troubles as the fruits of something else. 

We have more to do, however, than to help Sir 
Erskine May out of his scrape about France. We 
have to see whether the considerations which we have 
been employing may not be of use to us about Eng- 
land. 

We shall not have much difficulty in admitting 
whatever good is to be said of ourselves, and we will 
try not to be unfair by excluding all that is not so 



II.] EQUALITY. 57 

favourable. Indeed, our less favourable side is the 
one which we should be the most anxious to note, in 
order that we may mend it. But we will begin 
with the good. Our people has energy and honesty 
as its good characteristics. We have a strong sense 
for the chief power in the life and progress of man, — 
the power of conduct. So far we speak of the Eng- 
lish people as a whole. Then we have a rich, refined, 
and splendid aristocracy. And we have, according 
to Mr. Charles Sumner's acute and true remark, a 
class of gentlemen, not of the nobility, but well-bred, 
cultivated, and refined, larger than is to be found in 
any other country. For these last we have Mr. 
Sumner's testimony. As to the splendour of our 
aristocracy, all the world is agreed. Then we have 
a middle class and a lower class ; and they, after all, 
are the immense bulk of the nation. 

Let us see how the civilisation of these classes 
appears to a Frenchman, who has witnessed, in his 
own country, the considerable humanisation of these 
classes by equality. To such an observer our middle 
class divides itself into a serious portion and a gay or 
rowdy portion ; both are a marvel to him. With the 
gay or rowdy portion we need not much concern our- 
selves ; we shall figure it to our minds sufficiently if 
we conceive it as the source of that war-song pro- 
duced in these recent days of excitement : 

"We don't want to figlit, but by jingo, if we do, 
We've got the ships, we've got the men, and we've got 
the money too." 

We may also partly judge its standard of life, and 
the needs of its nature, by the modern English 
theatre, perhaps the most contemptible in Europe. 
But the real strength of the English middle class is 
in its serious portion. And of this a Frenchman, 



58 . MIXED ESSAYS. [ir. 

who was here some little time ago as the correspon- 
dent, I think, of the Sihle newspaper, and whose 
letters were afterwards published in a volume, writes 
as follows. He had been attending some of the 
Moody and Sankey meetings, and he says: "To 
understand the success of Messrs. Moody and Sankey, 
one must be familiar with English manners, one 
must know the mind-deadening influence of a narrow 
Biblism, one must have experienced the sense of 
acute ennui, which the aspect and the frequentation 
of this great division of English society produce in 
others, the want of elasticity and the chronic ennui 
which characterise this class itself, petrified in a 
narrow Protestantism and in a perpetual reading of 
the Bible." 

You know the French; — a little more Biblism, 
one may take leave to say, would do them no harm. 
But an audience like this, — and here, as I said, is the 
advantage of an audience like this, — will have no 
difficulty in admitting the amount of truth which 
there is in the Frenchman's picture. It is the picture 
of a class which, driven by its sense for the power of 
conduct, in the beginning of the seventeenth century 
entered, — as I have more than once said, and as I 
may more than once have occasion in future to say, 
— entered the prison of Puritanism, and had the Jeep 
turned upon its spirit there for two hundred years. They 
did not know, good and earnest people as they were, 
that to the building up of human life there belong all 
those other powers also, — the power of intellect and 
knowledge, the power of beauty, the power of social 
life and manners. And something, by what they 
became, they gained, and the whole nation with 
them ; they deepened and fixed for this nation the 
sense of conduct. But they created a type of life 
and manners, of which they themselves indeed are 



II J EQUALITY. 59 

slow to recognise the faults, but which is fatally 
condemned by its hideousness, its immense ennui, 
and against which the instinct of self-preservation in 
humanity rebels. 

Partisans fight against facts in vain. Mr. Goldwin 
Smith, a writer of eloquence and power, although too 
prone to acerbity, is a partisan of the Puritans, and 
of the Nonconformists who are the special inheritors 
of the Puritan tradition. He angrily resents the 
imputation upon that Puritan type of life, by which 
the life of our serious middle class has been formed, 
that it was doomed to hideousness, to immense ennui. 
He protests that it had beauty, amenity, accomplish- 
ment. Let us go to facts. Charles the First, who, 
with all his faults, had the just idea that art and 
letters are great civilisers, made, as you know, a 
famous collection of pictures, — our first National 
Gallery. It was, I suppose, the best collection at 
that time north of the Alps. It contained nine 
Eaphaels, eleven Correggios, twenty-eight Titians. 
What became of that collection ? The journals of 
the House of Commons will tell you. There you 
may see the Puritan Parliament disposing of this 
Whitehall or York House collection as follows : 
" Ordered, that all such pictures and statues there 
as are without any superstition, shall be forthwith 
sold. . . . Ordered, that all such pictures there as 
have the representation of the Second -Person in 
Trinity upon them, shall be forthwith burnt. Ordered, 
that all such pictures there as have the representation 
of the Virgin Mary upon them, shall be forthwith 
burnt," There we have the weak side of our parlia- 
mentary government and our serious middle class. 
We are incapable of sending Mr. Gladstone to be 
tried at the Old Bailey because he proclaims his 
[J antipathy to Lord Beaconsfield. A majority in our 



60 MIXED ESSAYS. [ii. 

House of Commons is incapable of hailing, with 
frantic laughter and applause, a string of indecent 
jests against Christianity and its Founder. But we 
are not, or were not, incapable of producing a 
Parliament which burns or sells the masterpieces of 
Italian art. And one may surely say of such a 
Puritan Parliament, and of those who determine its 
line for it, that they had not the spirit of beauty. 

What shall we say of amenity 1 Milton was born 
a humanist, but the Puritan temper, as we know, 
mastered him. There is nothing more unlovely and 
unamiable than Milton the Puritan disputant. Some 
one answers his Doctrine and Discijjline of Divorce. 
"I mean not," rejoins Milton, "to dispute philosophy 
with this pork, who never read any." However, he 
does reply to him, and throughout the reply Milton's 
great joke is, that his adversary, who was anonymous, 
is a serving-man. "Finally, he winds up his text 
with much doubt and trepidation ; for it may be his 
trenchers were not scraped, and that which never yet 
afforded corn of favour to his noddle, — the salt-cellar, 
— was not rubbed; and therefore, in this haste, 
easily granting that his answers fall foul upon each 
other, and praying you would not think he writes 
as a prophet, but as a man, he runs to the black 
jack, fills his flagon, spreads the table, and serves up 
dinner." There you have the same spirit of urbanity 
and amenity, as much of it, and as little, as generally 
informs the religious controversies of our Puritan 
middle class to this day. 

But Mr. Goldwin Smith insists, and picks out his 
own exemplar of the Puritan type of life and manners; 
and even here let us follow him. He picks out the 
most favourable specimen he can find, — Colonel 
Hutchinson, whose well-known memoirs, written by 
his widow, we have all read with interest. "Lucy 



II.] EQUALITY. 61 

Hutchinson," says Mr. Goldwin Smith, " is painting 
what she thought a perfect Puritan would be ; and 
her picture presents to us not a coarse, crop-eared, 
and snuffling fanatic, but a highly accomplished, 
refined, gallant, and most amiable, though religious 
and seriously minded, gentleman." Let us, I say, in 
this example of Mr. Goldwin Smith's own choosing, 
lay our finger upon the points where this type deflects 
from the truly humane ideal. 

Mrs. Hutchinson relates a story which gives us a 
good notion of what the amiable and accomplished 
social intercourse, even of a picked Puritan family, 
was. Her husband was governor of Nottingham. 
He had occasion, she says, "to go and break up a 
private meeting in the cannoneer's chamber ; and in 
the cannoneer's chamber " were found some notes 
concerning psedobaptism, which, being brought into 
the governor's lodgings, his wife having perused 
them and compared them with the Scriptures, found 
not what to say against the truths they asserted 
concerning the misapplication of that ordinance to 
infants." Soon afterwards she expects her confine- 
ment, and communicates the cannoneer's doubts 
about psedobaptism to her husband. The fatal 
cannoneer makes a breach in him too. ''Then he 
bought and read all the eminent treatises on both 
sides, which at that time came thick from the presses, 
and still was cleared in the error of the paedobaptists." 
Finally, Mrs. Hutchinson is confined. Then the 
governor "invited all the ministers to dinner, and 
propounded his doubt and the ground thereof to 
them. None of them could defend their practice 
with any satisfactory reason, but the tradition of the 
Church from the primitive times, and their main 
buckler of federal holiness, which Tombs and Denne 
had excellently overthrown. He and his wife then. 



62 MIXED ESSAYS. [il. 

professing themselves unsatisfied, desired their opin- 
ions." With the opinions I will not trouble you, 
but hasten to the result : " Whereupon that infant 
was not baptized." 

No doubt to a large division of English society at 
this very day, that sort of dinner and discussion, and, 
indeed, the whole manner of life and conversation 
here suggested by Mrs. Hutchinson's narrative, will 
seem both natural and amiable, and such as to meet 
the needs of man as a religious and social creature. 
You know the conversation which reigns in thousands 
of middle-class families at this hour, about nunneries, 
teetotalism, the confessional, eternal punishment, 
ritualism, disestablishment. It goes wherever the 
class goes which is moulded on the Puritan type of 
life. In the long winter evenings of Toronto Mr. 
Gold win Smith has had, probably, abundant ex- 
perience of it. What is its enemy 1 The instinct of 
self-preservation in humanity. Men make crude 
types and try to impose them, but to no purpose. 
"L'homme s'agite, Dieu U m^e" says Bossuet. "There 
are many devices in a man's heart ; nevertheless the 
counsel of the Eternal, that shall stand." Those 
who offer us the Puritan type of life offer us a 
religion not true, the claims of intellect and know- 
ledge not satisfied, the claim of beauty not satisfied, 
the claim of manners not satisfied. In its strong 
sense for conduct that life touches truth; but its 
other imperfections hinder it from employing even 
this sense aright. The type mastered our nation for 
a time. Then came the reaction. The nation said : 
" This type, at any rate, is amiss ; we are not going 
to be all like that /" The type retired into our 
middle class, and fortified itself there. It seeks to 
endure, to emerge, to deny its own imperfections, to 
impose itself again ; — impossible ! If we continue 



II.] EQUALITY. 63 

to live, we must outgrow it. The very class in 
which it is rooted, our middle class, will have to 
acknowledge the type's inadequacy, will have to 
acknowledge the hideousness, the immense ennui of 
the life which this type has created, will have to 
transform itself thoroughly. It will have to admit 
the large part of truth which there is in the criticisms 
of our Frenchman, whom we have too long forgotten. 

After our middle class he turns his attention to 
our lower class. And of the lower and larger portion 
of this, the portion not bordering on the middle class 
and sharing its faults, he says : " I consider this 
multitude to be absolutely devoid, not only of politi- 
cal principles, but even of the most simple notions of 
good and evil. Certainly it does not appeal, this 
mob, to the principles of '89, which you English 
make game of; it does not insist on the rights of 
man ; what it wants is beer, gin, and fun" '^ 

That is a description of what Mr. Bright would 
call the residuum, only our author seems to think 
the residuum a very large body. And its condition 
strikes him with amazement and horror. And surely 
well it may. Let us recall Mr. Hamerton's account 
of the most illiterate class in France ; what an 
amount of civilisation they have notwithstanding ! 
And this is always to be understood, in hearing or 
reading a Frenchman's praise of England. He envies 
our liberty, our public spirit, our trade, our stability. 
But there is always a reserve in his mind. He never 
means for a moment that he would like to change 
with us. Life seems to him so much better a thing 
in France for so many more people, that, in spite of 
the fearful troubles of France, it is best to be a 
Frenchman. A Frenchman might agree with Mr. 
Cobden, that life is good in England for those people 
^ So in the original. 



64 MIXED ESSAYS. [ii. 

who have at least £5000 a year. But the civilisation 
of that immense majority who have not £5000 a 
year, or £500, or even £100, — of our middle and 
lower class, — seems to him too deplorable. 

And now what has this condition of our middle 
and lower class to tell us about equality 1 How is 
it, must we not ask, how is it that, being without 
fearful troubles, having so many achievements to 
show and so much success, having as a nation a deep 
sense for conduct, having signal energy and honesty, 
having a splendid aristocracy, having an exceptionally 
large class of gentlemen, we are yet so little civilised 1 
How is it that our middle and lower classes, in spite 
of the individuals among them who are raised by 
happy gifts of nature to a more humane life, in spite 
of the seriousness of the middle class, in spite of the 
honesty and power of true work, the virtus verusque 
labor, which are to be found in abundance throughout 
the lower, do yet present, as a whole, the characters 
which we have seen? 

And really it seems as if the current of our dis- 
course carried us of itself to but one conclusion. It 
seems as if we could not avoid concluding, that just 
as France owes her fearful troubles to other things 
and her civilisedness to equality, so we owe our 
immunity from fearful troubles to other things, and 
our uncivilisedness to inequality. "Knowledge is 
easy," says the wise man, "to him that under- 
standeth ;" easy, he means, to him who will use his 
mind simply and rationally, and not to make him 
think he can know what he cannot, or to maintain, 
per fas et nefas, a false thesis with which he fancies 
his interests to be bound up. And to him who will 
use his mind as the wise man recommends, surely it 
is easy to see that our shortcomings in civilisation 
are due to our inequality ; or in other words, that 



II.] EQUALITY. 65 

the great inequality of classes and property, which 
came to lis from the Middle Age and which we 
maintain because we have the religion of inequality, 
that this constitution of things, I say, has the natural 
and necessary effect, under present circumstances, of 
materialising our upper class, vulgarising our middle 
class, and brutalising our lower class. And this is 
to fail in civilisation. 

For only just look how the facts combine them- 
selves. I have said little as yet about our aristo- 
cratic class, except that it is splendid. Yet these, 
" our often very unhappy brethren," as Burke calls 
them, are by no means matter for nothing but ecstasy. 
Our charity ought certainly, Burke says, to " extend 
a due and anxious sensation of pity to the distresses 
of the miserable great." Burke's extremely strong 
language about their miseries and defects I will not 
quote. For my part, I am always disposed to marvel 
that human beings, in a position so false, should be 
so good as these are. Their reason for existing was 
to serve as a number of centres in a world disinte- 
grated after the ruin of the Roman Empire, and 
slowly re-constituting itself. Numerous centres of 
material force were needed, and these a feudal aristo- 
cracy supplied. Their large and hereditary estates 
served this public end. The owners had a positive 
function, for which their estates were essential. In 
our modern world the function is gone ; and the 
great estates, with an infinitely multii3lied power of 
ministering to mere pleasure and indulgence, remain. 
The energy and honesty of our race does not leave 
itself without witness in this class, and nowhere are 
there more conspicuous examples of individuals raised 
by happy gifts of nature far above their fellows and 
their circumstances. For distinction of all kinds this 
class has an esteem. Everything which succeeds 

VOL. IV. F 



66 MIXED ESSAYS. [ii. 

they tend to welcome, to win over, to put on their 
side ; genius may generally make, if it will, not bad 
terms for itself with them. But the total result of 
the class, its effect on society at large and on national 
progress, are what we must regard. And on the 
whole, with no necessary function to fulfil, never 
conversant with life as it really is, tempted, flattered, 
and spoiled from childhood to old age, our aristocratic ' 
class is inevitably materialised, and the more so the 
more the development of industry and • ingenuity 
augments the means of luxury. Every one can see 
how bad is the action of such an aristocracy upon 
the class of newly enriched people, whose great 
danger is a materialistic ideal, just because it is the 
ideal they can easiest comprehend. Nor is the mis- 
chief of this action now compensated by signal services 
of a public kind. Turn even to that sphere which 
aristocracies think specially their own, and where 
they have under other circumstances been really 
effective, — the sphere of politics. When there is 
need, as now, for any large forecast of the course of 
human affairs, for an acquaintance with the ideas 
which in the end sway mankind, and for an estimate 
of their power, aristocracies are out of their element, 
and materialised aristocracies most of all. In the 
immense spiritual movement of our day, the English 
aristocracy, as I have elsewhere said, always reminds 
me of Pilate confronting the phenomenon of Christi- 
anity. Nor can a materialised class have any serious 
and fruitful sense for the power of beauty. They 
may imagine themselves to be in pursuit of beauty ; 
but how often, alas, does the pursuit come to little 
more than dabbling a little in what they are pleased 
to call art, and making a great deal of what they are 
pleased to call love ! 

Let us return to their merits. For the power of 



IT.] EQUALITY. 67 

manners an aristocratic class, whether materialised 
or not, will always, from its circumstances, have a 
strong sense. And although for this power of social 
life and manners, so important to civilisation, our 
English race has no special natural turn, in our 
aristocracy this power emerges and marks them. 
When the day of general humanisation comes, they 
will have fixed the standard of manners. The 
English simplicity, too, makes the best of the English 
aristocracy more frank and natural than the best of 
the like class anywhere else, and even the worst of 
them it makes free from the incredible fatuities and 
absurdities of the worst. Then the sense of conduct 
they share with their countrymen at large. In no 
class has it such trials to undergo ; in none is it 
more often and more grievously overborne. But 
really the right comment on this is the comment of 
Pepys upon the evil courses of Charles the Second 
and the Duke of York and the court of that day : 
"At all which I am sorry;- but it is the effect of 
idleness, and having nothing else to employ their 
great spirits upon." 

Heaven forbid that I should speak in dispraise of 
that unique and most English class which Mr. Charles 
Sumner extols — the large class of gentlemen, not of 
the landed class or of the nobility, but cultivated and 
refined. They are a seemly product of the energy 
and of the power to rise in our race. Without, in 
general, rank and splendour and wealth and luxury 
to polish them, they have made their own the high 
standard of life and manners of an aristocratic and 
refined class. Not having all the dissipations and 
distractions of this class, they are much more seriously 
alive to the power of intellect and knowledge, to the 
power of beauty. The sense of conduct, too, meets 
with fewer trials in this class. To some extent, 



68 MIXED ESSAYS. ' [ii. 

however, their contiguousness to the aristocratic class 
has now the effect of materialising them, as it does 
the class of newly enriched people. The most palp- 
able action is on the young amongst them, and on 
their standard of life and enjoyment. But in general, 
for this whole class, established facts, the materialism 
which they see regnant, too much block their mental 
horizon, and limit the possibilities of things to them. 
They are deficient in openness and flexibility of mind, 
in free play of ideas, in faith and ardour. Civilised 
they are, but they are not much of a civilising force ; 
they are somehow bounded and ineffective. 

So on the middle class they produce singularly 
little effect. What the middle class sees is that 
splendid piece of materialism, the aristocratic class, 
with a wealth and luxury utterly out of their reach, 
with a standard of social life and manners, the off- 
spring of that wealth and luxury, seeming utterly 
out of their reach also. And thus they are thrown 
back upon themselves — upon a defective type of 
religion, a narrow range of intellect and knowledge, 
a stunted sense of beauty, a low standard of manners. 
And the lower class see before them the aristocratic 
class, and its civilisation, such as it is, even infinitely 
more out of their reach than out of that of the middle 
class j while the life of the middle class, with its 
unlovely types of religion, thought, beauty, and 
manners, has naturally, in general, no great attrac- 
tions for them either. And so they too are thrown 
back upon themselves ; upon their beer, their gin, 
and their fun. Xow, then, you will understand what 
I meant by saying that our inequality materialises 
our upper class, vulgarises our middle class, brutalises 
our lower. 

And the greater the inequality the more marked 
is its bad action upon the middle and lower classes. 



1 



II.] EQUALITY. 69 

In Scotland the landed aristocracy fills the scene, as 
is well known, still more than in England ; the other 
classes are more squeezed back and effaced. And 
the social civilisation of the lower middle class and 
of the poorest class, in Scotland, is an example of the 
consequences. Compared with the same class even 
in England, the Scottish lower middle class is most 
visibly, to vary Mr. Charles Sumner's phrase, less 
well-bred, less careful in personal habits and in social 
conventions, less refined. Let any one who doubts 
it go, after issuing from the aristocratic solitudes 
which possess Loch Lomond, let him go and observe 
the shopkeepers and the middle class in Dumbarton, 
and Greenock, and Gourock, and the places along the 
mouth of the Clyde. And for the poorest class, who 
that has seen it can ever forget the hardly human 
horror, the abjection and uncivilisedness of Glasgow? 
What a strange religion, then, is our religion of 
inequality ! Romance often helps a religion to hold 
its ground, and romance is good in its way ; but 
ours is not even a romantic religion. No doubt our 
aristocracy is an object of very strong public interest. 
The Times itself bestows a leading article by way of 
epithalamium on the Duke of Norfolk's marriage. 
And those journals of a new type, full of talent, and 
which interest me particularly because they seem as 
if they were written by the young lion of our youth, 
— the young lion grown mellow and, as the French 
say, viveur, arrived at his full and ripe knowledge of 
the world, and minded to enjoy the smooth evening 
of his days, — those journals, in the main a sort of 
social gazette of the aristocracy, are apparently not 
read by that class only which they most concern, but 
are read with great avidity by other classes also. 
And the common people too have undoubtedly, as 
.Mr. Gladstone says, a wonderful preference for a 



70 MIXED ESSAYS. [ii. 

lord. Yet our aristocracy, from the action upon it 
of the Wars of the Eoses, the Tudors, and the 
political necessities of George the Third, is for the 
imagination a singularly modern and uninteresting 
one. Its splendour of station, its wealth, show, and 
luxury, is then what the other classes really admire 
in it j and this is not an elevating admiration. Such 
an admiration will never lift us out of our vulgarity 
and brutality, if we chance to be vulgar and brutal 
to start with ; it will rather feed them and be fed by 
them. So that when Mr. Gladstone invites us to 
call our love of inequality " the complement of the 
love of freedom or its negative pole, or the shadow 
which the love of freedom casts, or the reverberation 
of its voice in the halls of the constitution," we must 
surely answer that all this mystical eloquence is not 
in the least necessary to explain so simple a matter ; 
that our love of inequality is really the vulgarity in 
us, and the brutality, admiring and worshipping the 
splendid materiality. 

Our present social organisation, however, will and 
must endure until our middle class is provided with 
some better ideal of life than it has now. Our 
present organisation has been an appointed stage in 
our growth ; it has been of good use, and has enabled 
us to do great things. But the use is at an end, and 
the stage is over. Ask yourselves if you do not 
sometimes feel in yourselves a sense, that in spite of 
the strenuous ejfforts for good of so many excellent 
persons amongst us, we begin somehow to flounder 
and to beat the air ; that we seem to be finding 
ourselves stopped on this line of advance and on that, 
and to be threatened with a sort of standstill. It is 
that we are trying to live on with a social organisa- 
tion of which the day is over. Certainly equality 
will never of itself alone give us a perfect civilisation. 



II.] EQUALITY. 71 

But, "vvith such inequality as ours, a perfect civilisa- 
tion is impossible. 

To that conclusion, facts, and the stream itself of 
this discourse, do seem, I think, to carry us irresist- 
ibly. We arrive at it because they so choose, not 
because we so choose. Our tendencies are all the 
other way. We are all of us politicians, and in one 
of two camps, the Liberal or the Conservative. 
Liberals tend to accept the middle class as it is, and 
to praise the nonconformists ; while Conservatives 
tend to accept the upper class as it is, and to praise 
the aristocracy. And yet here we are at the conclu- 
sion, that whereas one of the great obstacles to our 
civilisation is, as I have often said, British noncon- 
formity, another main obstacle to our civilisation is 
British aristocracy ! And this while we are yet 
forced to recognise excellent special qualities as well 
as the general English energy and honesty, and a 
number of emergent humane individuals, in both 
nonconformists and aristocracy- Clearly such a con- 
clusion can be none of our own seeking. 

Then again, to remedy our inequality, there must 
be a change in the law of bequest, as there has been 
in France ; and the faults and inconveniences of the 
present French law of bequest are obvious. It tends 
to over-divide property ; it is unequal in operation, 
and can be eluded by people limiting their families ; 
it makes the children, however ill they may behave, 
independent of the parent. To be sure, Mr. Mill and 
others have shown that a law of bequest fixing the 
maximum, whether of land or money, which any one 
individual may take by bequest or inheritance, but 
in other respects leaving the testator quite free, has 
none of the inconveniences of the French law, and 
is in every way preferable. But evidently these are 
not questions of practical politics. Just imagine 



72 MIXED ESSAYS. [ii. 

Lord Hartington going down to Glasgow, and meet- 
ing his Scotch Liberals there, and saying to them : 
" You are ill at ease, and you are calling for change, 
and very justly. But the cause of your being ill at 
ease is not what you suppose. The cause of your 
being ill at ease is the profound imperfectness of your 
social civilisation. Your social civilisation is indeed 
such as I forbear to characterise. But the remedy is 
not disestablishment. The remedy is social equality. 
Let me direct your attention to a reform in the law 
of bequest and entail." One can hardly speak of 
such a thing without laughing. No, the matter is at 
present one for the thoughts of those who think. It 
is a thing to be turned over in the minds of those 
who, on the one hand, have the spirit of scientific 
inquirers, bent on seeing things as they really are ; 
and, on the other hand, the spirit of friends of the 
humane life, lovers of perfection. To your thoughts 
I commit it. And perhaps, the more you think of 
it, the more you will be persuaded that Menander 
showed his wisdom quite as much when he said 
Clwose equality, as when he assured us that Evil com- 
munications corrupt good manners. 



III. 

lEISH CATHOLICISM AND BEITISH 
LIBEEALISM. 

All roads, says tlie proverb, lead to Eome ; and one 
finds in like manner that all questions raise tlie ques- 
tion of religion. We say to ourselves that religion 
is a subject where one is prone to be too copious and 
too pertinacious, where it is easy to do harm, easy to 
be misunderstood ; that what we felt ourselves bound 
to say on it we have said, and that we will discuss 
it no longer. And one may keep one's word faith- 
fully so far as the direct discussion of religion goes ; 
but then the irrepressible subject manages to present 
itself for discussion indirectly. Questions of good 
government, social harmony, education, civilisation, 
come forth and ask to be considered ; and very soon 
it appears that we cannot possibly treat them without 
returning to treat of religion. Ireland raises a crowd 
of questions thus complicated. 

Our nation is not deficient in self-esteem, and cer- 
tainly there is much in our achievements and pro- 
spects to give us satisfaction. But even to the most 
self-satisfied Englishman, Ireland must be an occasion, 
one would think, from time to time of mortifying 
thoughts. We may be conscious of nothing but the 
best intentions towards Ireland, the justest dealings 



74 MIXED ESSAYS. [iii. 

with her. But how little she seems to appreciate 
them ! We may talk, with the Daily Telegraph, of 
our " great and genial policy of conciliation " towards 
Ireland ; we may say, with Mr. Lowe, that by their 
Irish policy in 1868 the Liberal Ministry, of whom 
he was one, " resolved to knit the hearts of the em- 
pire into one harmonious concord, and knitted they 
were accordingly." Only, unfortunately, the Irish 
themselves do not see the matter as we do. All 
that by our genial policy we seem to have succeeded 
in inspiring in the Irish themselves is an aversion to 
us so violent, that for England to incline one way is 
a sufficient reason to make Ireland incline another ; 
and the obstruction offered by the Irish members in 
Parliament is really an expression, above all, of this 
uncontrollable antipathy. Nothing is more honour- 
able to French civilisation than its success in attach- 
ing strongly to France, — France, Catholic, and Celtic, 
— the German and Protestant Alsace. What a con- 
trast to the humiliating failure of British civilisation 
to attach to Germanic and Protestant Great Britain 
the Celtic and Catholic Ireland ! 

For my part, I have never affected to be either 
surprised or indignant at the antipathy of the Irish 
to us. What they have had to suffer from us in past 
times, all the world knows. And now, when we 
profess to practise "a great and genial policy of 
conciliation " towards them, they are really governed 
by us in deference to the opinion and sentiment of 
the British middle class, and of the strongest part of 
this class, the Puritan community. I have pointed 
out this before, but in a book about schools, and 
which only those who are concerned with schools are 
likely to have read. Let me be suffered, therefore, 
to repeat it here. The opinion and sentiment of our 
middle class controls the policy of our statesmen 



111.] IRISH CATHOLICISM & BRITISH LIBERALISM. 75 

towards Ireland. That policy does not represent 
the real mind of our leading statesmen, but the mind 
of the British middle class controlling the action of 
statesmen. The ability of our popular journalists 
and successful statesmen goes to putting the best 
colour they can upon the action so controlled. But 
a disinterested observer will see an action so con- 
trolled to be what it is, and will call it what it is. 
Now the great failure in our actual national life is 
the imperfect civilisation of our middle class. The 
great need of our time is the transformation of the 
British Puritan. Our Puritan middle class presents 
a defective tj-pe of religion, a narrow range of intel- 
lect and knowledge, a stunted sense of beauty, a low 
standai'd of manners. And yet it is in deference to 
the opinion and sentiment of such a class that we 
shape our policy towards Ireland. And we wonder 
at Ireland's antipathy to us ! Nay, we expect Ire- 
land to lend herself to the make-believe of our own 
journalists and statesmen, and to call our policy 
"genial." 

The Irish Catholics, who are the immense majority 
in Ireland, want a Catholic university. Elsewhere 
both Catholics and Protestants have universities 
where their sons may be taught by persons of their 
own form of religion. Catholic France allowed the 
Protestants of Alsace to have the Protestant univer- 
sity of Strasburg. Protestant Prussia allows the 
Catholics of the Rhine Province to have the Catholic 
university of Bonn. True, at Strasburg, men of any 
religious persuasion might be appointed to teach 
anatomy or chemistry ; true, at Bonn there is a 
Protestant faculty of theology as well as a Catholic. 
But I call Strasburg a Protestant and Bonn a Catho- 
lic university in this sense : that religion and the 
matters mixed up with religion are taught in the one 



76 MIXED ESSAYS. [iii. 

by Protestants, and in the other by Catholics. This 
is the guarantee which ordinary parents desire, and 
this at Bonn and at Strasburg they get. The Pro- 
testants of Ireland have in Trinity College, Dublin, 
a university where the teachers in all those matters 
which afford debatable ground between Catholic and 
Protestant are Protestant. The Protestants of Scot- 
land have universities of a like character. In Eng- 
land the members of the English Church have in 
Oxford and Cambridge universities where the teachers 
are almost wholly Anglican. Well, the Irish Catho- 
lics ask, to be allowed the same thing. 

There is extraordinary difficulty in getting this 
demand of theirs directly and frankly met. They 
are told that they want secondary schools even more 
than a university. That may be very true, but they 
do also want a university ; and to ask for one insti- 
tution is a simpler affair than to ask for a great 
many. They are told they have the Queen's Colleges, 
invented expressly for Ireland. But they do not 
want colleges invented expressly for Ireland ; they 
want colleges such as those which the English and 
Scotch have in Scotland and England. They are 
told that they may have a university of the London 
type, an examining board, and perhaps a system of 
prizes. But all the world is not, like Mr. Lowe, 
enamoured of examining boards and prizes. The world 
in general much prefers to universities of the London 
type universities of the type of Strasburg, Bonn, Ox- 
ford; and the Irish are of the same mind as the world in 
general. They are told that Mr. Gladstone's govern- 
ment offered them a university without theology, phil- 
osophy, or history, and that they refused it. But the 
world in general does not desire universities with the- 
ology, philosophy, and history left out ; no more did 
Ireland. They are told that Trinity College, Dublin, 



III.] lEISH CATHOLICISM & BEITISH LIBEKALISM. 77 

is now an unsectarian university no more Protestant 
than Catholic, and that they may use Trinity College. 
But the teaching in Trinity College is, and long will be 
(and very naturally), for the most part in the hands 
of Protestants ; the whole character, tradition, and 
atmosphere of the place are Protestant. The Irish 
Catholics want to have on their side, too, a place 
where the university teaching is mainly in the hands 
of Catholics, and of which the character and atmo- 
sphere shall be Catholic. But then they are asked 
whether they propose to do away with all the mani- 
fold and deep-rooted results of Protestant ascendency 
in Ireland, and they are warned that this would be 
a hard, nay, impossible matter. But they are not 
proposing anything so enormous and chimerical as 
to do away with all the results of Protestant ascend- 
ency; they propose merely to put an end to one 
particular and very cruel result of it : — the result 
that they, the immense majority of the Irish people, 
have no university, while the Protestants in Ireland, 
the small minority, have one. For this plain hard- 
ship they propose a plain remedy, and to their pro- 
posal they want a plain and straightforward answer. 
And at last they get it. It is the papal answer : 
Non possumus. The English Ministry and Parliament 
may wish to give them what they demand, may think 
their claim just, but they cannot give it them. In 
the mind and temper of the English people there is 
an unconquerable obstacle. " The claims of the 
Irish Roman Cathohcs," says the Times, " are incon- 
sistent with the practical conditions of politics. It 
is necessary to repeat the simple fact that the temper 
of the people of Great Britain will not admit of any 
endowment of Roman Catholic institutions. We 
should recognise the futility of contending against 
the most rooted of popular prejudices." " The 



78 MIXED ESSAYS. [ill. 

demand for the State endoTTment of a Roman Catholic 
university, or of a Roman Catholic college," says the 
Saturday Bevieiv, " may be perfectly just, but it is at 
the same time perfectly impracticable. The determi- 
nation not to grant it may be quite illogical, but it is 
very firmly rooted." A radical and almost miraculous 
change in the mind and temper of the objectors is 
required, the Saturday Review adds, before such a 
thing can be granted. And in the House of Com- 
mons Mr. Lowe said : " He would not argue whether 
it would be good or bad to found out of public funds 
a Catholic university in Ireland; all he said was that 
it was not in the power of that House to do so. 
Every one who knew the state of feeling in England, 
Scotland, and a part of Ireland, must know that if 
the Government were to attempt such a thing, it 
would be running its head against a wall, running 
upon its own destruction. It would be perfectly 
impossible to carry any such measure through the 
House." So that in our "genial policy of concilia- 
tion" towards Ireland we are fettered by a non 
possumus. And the non possumus has provided itself 
with a short formula which is everywhere current 
among us, and which is this : " The Liberal party 
has emphatically condemned religious endowment : 
the Protestants of Great Britain are emphatically 
hostile to the endowment of Catholicism in any 
shape or form." -^ 

Let us leave for a moment the Protestants of 
Great Britain, and let us think of the Liberal party 
only. Mr. Lowe has in the Fortnightly Review, not 
many months ago, admirably set forth the ideal of 
the Liberal party. " The ideal of the Liberal party, " 
says Mr. Lowe, " consists in a view of things undis- 
turbed and undistorted by the promptings of interests 
or prejudice, in a complete independence of all class 



III.] IRISH CATHOLICISM & BRITISH LIBERALISM. 79 

interests, and in relying for its success on the better 
feelings and higher intelligence of mankind." Happier 
words could not well be found ; such is indeed the 
true ideal of the Liberal party. Well, then, if the 
demand of the Irish for a Catholic university is 
perfectly just, if the refusal of it is perfectly illogical, 
how bitter it must be for a true Liberal to refuse it 
on the score of "the futility of contending against 
the most rooted of popular prejudices"! To be un- 
disturbed by the promptings of prejudice, and to rely 
for success on the better feelings and higher intelli- 
gence of mankind, is the very ideal which a true 
Liberal has to follow. And to the best and most 
reflecting Liberals, accordingly, it seems to have been 
given to see that, whether religious endowment be 
in itself good or bad, Great Britain cannot justly 
refuse Ireland's claim for a university of that kind 
which we ourselves, in England and Scotland, prefer 
and adopt, and that to withhold it in deference to 
popular prejudice is wrong. Mr. John Morley has 
recorded Mr. Mill's opinion, declared in the last con- 
versation which Mr. Mill ever had with him. "He 
seemed disposed to think that the most feasible 
solution of the Irish University question is a Catholic 
university, the restrictive and obscurantist tendencies 
of which you may expect to have checked by the 
active competition of life with men trained in more 
enlightened systems." 

Mr. Morley, who thus records Mr. Mill's opinion, 
has avowed that he himself shares it. But of still 
more importance was the practical adhesion given 
the other day in the House of Commons to Mr. Mill's 
opinion, by a certain number of English Liberals, on 
the occasion of the O'Conor Don's resolution affirming 
the claims of Ireland to a Catholic university. A 
certain number of English Liberal members, and 



80 MIXED ESSAYS. [in. 

amongst them men so prominent and so ardently 
Liberal as Mr. Chamberlain and Sir Charles Dilke, 
voted in favour of the O'Conor Don's resolution. 
True, there was after all a great majority against the 
resolution. The mass of Liberals, as well as the 
mass of Conservatives, were, like the Times, for "re- 
cognising the futility of contending against the most 
rooted of popular prejudices." The claims, the just 
claims, of Ireland were sacrificed, as they have been 
sacrificed so often, to the opinion and sentiment of 
the British middle class, of the British Puritan, who 
cries that if the State endows a Roman Catholic 
university, the State is, "by force of the tax-gatherer, 
compelling us to teach as truth that which we before 
God assert without the slightest misgiving to be 
dismal error, and making us parties to a lie." They 
were sacrificed to the prejudices of people whose 
narrowness and whose imperfect civilisation every 
cultivated man amongst us perceives and deplores. 
And the continued rule of these prejudices is pre- 
sented as a fatality from which there can be no 
escape without a miracle. But perhaps when Liberals 
of such mark as Sir Charles Dilke and Mr. Chamber- 
lain have the courage to set them at nought, and 
have the courage to set at nought also, at least for 
this one occasion, the formula that " the Liberal 
party has emphatically condemned religious endow- 
ment," the miracle has begun. 

At all events, few things in politics have ever 
given me more pleasure than to see the aid courage- 
ously afforded to Irish Catholics by this little band 
of advanced English Liberals. I do not profess to 
be a politician, but simply one of a disinterested class 
of observers, who, with no organised and embodied 
set of supporters to please, set themselves to ob- 
serve honestly and to report faithfully the state and 



III.] lEISH CATHOLICISM & BRITISH LIBERALISM. 81 

prospects of our civilisation. But the ideal of the 
Liberal party, as we have seen it declared by Mr. 
Lowe, is certainly also the ideal of such a class of 
observers. However, the practice of Liberals has 
seemed to me to fall a good deal short of this ideal, 
and, instead of relying for its success on the better 
feelings and higher intelligence of mankind, to lend 
itself very often to the wishes of narrow and pre- 
judiced people, in the hope of finding its account by 
so doing. And I have again and again, for a good 
many years past, being a humble follower of the true 
Liberal ideal, remarked that by their actual practice 
our Liberals, however prosperous they might seem, 
could not really succeed ; — that their doings wanted 
more of simple and sincere thought to direct them, 
that their performance was far less valuable than 
they supposed, and that it and they were more and 
more losing their charm for the nation. This I said 
in their prosperity. But in their present adversity I 
prefer to remember only that their cause is in a 
general way, at any rate, mine also ; that I serve 
and would fain follow the Liberal ideal. 

And as we are told that, in the depressed days of 
Israel, " they that feared the Eternal spake often one 
to another," to confirm one another in a belief of the 
final triumph of their cause, so, in the present evil 
days. Liberals ought to speak often one to another 
of relying upon the better feelings and higher intelli- 
gence of manldnd, that we may keep up our faith 
and spirits. Or if, in addressing advanced Liberals, 
it should seem out of place to cite the example of a 
set of antiquated Jewish religionists, let me quote 
the comfortable words of a blameless Liberal, Con- 
dorcet, who assures us that "the natural order of 
things tends to bring general opinion more and more 
into conformity with truth." Lordre naturel tend cb 

VOL. IV. G 



82 MIXED ESSAYS. [iii. 

rendre Vojpinion gdniraU de plus en plus conforme h la 
vt'iU. And the politician who would be of real 
service must manage, Condorcet says, to get at this 
viriU^ this truth. Connattre la v6nU pour y conformer 
Vordre de la socUU, telle est Vunique source du bonheur 
public. Therefore, when Mr. Chamberlain and Sir 
Charles Dilke and other Liberal politicians have just 
given a signal proof of their faith in justice and 
reason, and of their willingness to contend for them 
''against the most rooted of popular prejudices," let 
us seize the opportunity of fortifying them and our- 
selves in the conviction that " the natural order of 
things tends to bring general opinion more and more 
into conformity with truth," and that it is an excel- 
lent principle in government to believe that to what 
is reasonable one may always hope to make the 
majority of men at last come in. Let us see if this 
may not even lead us to recast entirely the programme 
of our practical Liberalism, and to use our present 
dull times for bringing it more into correspondence 
with the true Liberal ideal. Perhaps the weakness 
of Liberalism will be found to lie in its having 
followed hitherto with a too eager solicitude the 
wishes of a class narrow-minded and imperfectly 
civilised ; its strength in the future must lie more in 
complying with the order which for our progress 
appears the true one, and in co-operating with nature 
to bring general opinion into harmony with it. 

For take the formula which is supposed to govern 
the action of British Liberalism towards Irish Catholi- 
cism, and which long has governed it, but which a 
small band of Liberal heroes the other day set at 
nought. " The Liberal party has emphatically con- 
demned religious endowment ; the Protestants of 
Great Britain are implacably hostile to the endow- 
ment of Catholicism in any shape or form." 



III.] lEISH CATHOLICISM & BRITISH LIBERALISM. 83 

This may seem a convenient formula for Liberals 
to adopt, because it enables us to act in concert with 
English Nonconformity and Scotch Puritanism. But 
e^ddently it tends to divide British Liberals from 
Irish Liberals. It costs British Liberals the support 
of Liberalism in Ireland, which they can ill afford to 
do without. Therefore it extremely behoves them to 
examine the formula well, and to ascertain how far 
it corresponds with the natural truth of things ; for 
this is always and surely tending, as we have seen, to 
prevail. And if the formula has natural truth on its 
side, then there is good reason for hoping that the 
Irish Catholics, however ignorant, may at last come 
into it and be reconciled to its operation. But if it 
has not natural truth on its side, then the irritation 
and estrangement which its operation must produce 
in Ireland will be perpetual. On the other hand, 
British Puritanism, however prejudiced, may be 
trusted to resign itself at some distant day to the 
abandonment of the formula if it is false, because 
time and nature will beneficently help towards such 
abandonment. 

" The Liberal party has emphatically condemned 
religious endowment." This maxim is not even now 
quite true in fact, for many members of the Liberal 
party favour religious endowment. And if that view 
of things out of which the maxim arises turns out to 
be erroneous, there is no reason why even those 
Liberals who have adopted the maxim should not 
drop it ; their cause, and their work, and their 
reason for existing are in no wise bound up with it. 
But it is not denied that " the Protestants," or at any 
rate the Puritans, " of Great Britain, are implacably 
hostile to the endowment of Catholicism in any 
shape or form." And however that view out of 
which their hostility arises may be shown to be 



84 MIXED ESSAYS. [iii. 

erroneous, there is every reason why they should 
long and obstinately shut their minds to the thought 
of abandoning that view and that hostility, because 
their cause, and their work, and their reason for 
existing are in great measure bound up with it. 
Still, if there appears to be no rational ground for 
objecting to the endowment of Catholicism in par- 
ticular, any more than to religious endowment in 
general, but, on the contrary, rational ground for 
allowing both the one and the other, Liberals ought 
not to set themselves stubbornly against even the 
endowment of Catholicism. 

As to the Church of England there are special 
errors of their own into which our Liberals are apt 
to fall, but as to Catholicism their usual and grand 
error is one which they have in common with 
Continental Liberals. This error consists in always 
regarding what is prodigious, mischievous, impossible 
in Catholicism, rather than what is natural, amiable, 
likely to endure. It is by this natural and better 
side that we should accustom ourselves to consider 
Catholicism, and we cannot conceive this side too 
simply. We should begin with Catholicism at that 
elementary stage when it is not yet even in conscious 
conflict with Protestantism. Let us take a Protestant 
example of the power of rehgion, since mth Protestant 
examples we ourselves are naturally most familiar, 
and let us see on what it hinges, and we shall be 
satisfied that the true power of religion in all forms 
of Christianity hinges at bottom on the same thing. 
Here is a letter written the other day by a common 
soldier in Walmer barracks to a lady whom he had 
met at a Methodist prayer-meeting, and who had 
interested herself in him : — 

" A few weeks ago I was thoroughly tired of Deal, but since I 
found my Saviour I thank God most heartily that ever I enlisted. 



III.] lEISH CATHOLICISM & BEITISH LIBERALISM. 85 

I had been going on loosely for years. From the death of a 
sister I left off for a time, but soon relapsed, and went from bad to 
worse until I came here, when one day walking by the chapel 
in a most miserable state of mind, I heard singing and was 
induced to go in. There I was powerfully wrought upon, 
resolved at once to give up sin, and am now happy in the 
enjoyment of God's love. God bless you, madam, and may 
God spare your useful life many years ! " 

Here, then, to what Epictetus calls " the madness 
and the misery of one who has been using as his 
measure of things that which seems to the senses and 
appetites, and misusing it," the influence of the 
religion of Jesus Christ has been applied, and has 
operated as a cure. Cases of exactly the same sort 
of emotion and conversion may be witnessed among 
the Breton mariners, hanging on the lips of an im- 
passioned Jesuit preacher in one of the crowded 
churches of Brittany. x4.nd no wonder. Men 
conscious of a bent for being modest, temperate, 
kindly, affectionate, find themselves shameless, disso- 
lute, living in malice and envy, hateful and hating 
one another. The experience is as old as the world, 
and the misery of it. And it is no cure whatever 
to be told that the Pope is not infallible, or that 
miracles do not happen ; but a cure, a divine cure, 
for the bondage and the misery, has been found for 
nearly two thousand years to lie in the word, the 
character, the influence of Jesus. In this cure 
resides the power and the permanence of the 
Christian religion. 

Liberals who have no conception of the Christian 
religion as of a real need of the community, which 
the community has to satisfy, should learn to fix 
their view upon this simple source, common to 
Catholics and Protestants alike, of Christianity's 
power and permanence. The power and permanence 



86 MIXED ESSAYS. [iii. 

come from Christianity's being a real source of cure 
for a real bondage and misery. Men have adapted 
the source to their use according to their lights, 
often very imperfect ; — have piled fantastic buildings 
around it, carried its healing waters by strange and 
intricate conduits, done their best to make it no 
longer recognisable. But, in their fashion, they have 
used and they do still use it; and whenever their 
religion is treated, often because of their mishandling 
and disfigurement of it, as an obsolete nuisance to be 
discouraged and helped to die out, a profound senti- 
ment in them rebels against such an outrage, because 
they are conscious not of their vain disfigurements 
of the Christian religion, but of its genuine curative- 
ness. 

Catholicism is that form of Christianity which is 
fullest of human accretions and superstitions, because 
it is the oldest, the largest, the most popular. It is 
the religion which has most reached the people. It 
has been the great popular religion of Christendom, 
with all the accretions and superstitions inseparable 
from such a character. The bulk of its superstitions 
come from its having really plunged so far down into 
the multitude, and spread so wide among them. If 
this is a cause of error, it is also a cause of attach- 
ment. Who has seen the poor in other churches as 
they are seen in Catholic churches ? Catholicism, 
besides, enveloped human life, and Catholics in 
general feel themselves to have drawn not only their 
religion from the Church, they feel themselves to 
have drawn from her, too,, their art and poetry and 
culture. Her hierarchy, again, originally stamped in 
their imaginations with the character of a beneficent 
and orderly authority springing up amidst anarchy, 
appeared next as offering a career where birth was 
disregarded and merit regarded, and the things of 



III.] IRISH CATHOLICISM & BRITISH LIBERALISM. 87 

the mind and the soul were honoured, in the midst 
of the iron feudal age which worshipped solely birth 
and force. So thus Catholicism acquired on the 
imagination a second hold. And if there is a thing 
specially alien to religion, it is divisions ; if there is 
a thing specially native to religion, it is peace and 
union. Hence the original attraction towards unity 
in Eome, and hence the great charm and power for 
men's minds of that unity when once attained. 
All these spells for the heart and imagination has 
Catholicism to Catholics, in addition to the spell for 
the conscience of a divine cure for vice and misery. 
And whoever treats Catholicism as a nuisance, to be 
helped to die out as soon as possible, has the heart, 
the imagination, and the conscience of Catholics, in 
just revolt against them. 

True, the accretions and superstitions, gathered 
round the curative religious germ, are dense ; true, 
the system of the Romish hierarchy carried with it 
the seeds of a thousand temptations and dangers, 
which have abundantly struck root ; true, as the 
individuality of the European nations has ripened, 
and unity in one's nation has become a dominant 
habit and idea, the collisions between this unity and 
the unity in Rome have become a matter for just 
disquietude. Here are hindrances to be combated 
by us undoubtedly, and if possible to be removed ; 
nevertheless, even in combating and removing them 
we should always remember that to the mass of 
Catholics they present themselves by a good side, 
not by their bad one. However, they are hindrances 
to civilisation, and we ought to regard them as such. 
But in a modern community they meet with natural 
counteractions of great power. And the power of 
those counteractions is greater, the more the com- 
munity has education, good government, happiness ; 



88 MIXED ESSAYS. [ill. 

it is least when the communitj^ is misgoverned, sunk 
in ignorance and misery. The national sense, in a 
free and high-spirited modern nation, may be trusted 
to assert itself, as time goes on, against that depend- 
ence on a government of foreigners, that meddling 
and intrigue by a government of foreigners, which is 
what the Ultramontane system, judged by practice, 
not theory, is seen really to bring with it. The 
family spirit, in a nation prosperous, educated, and 
of sound morals, may be trusted to assert itself 
against the excessive intervention of the priest. 
Finally and above all, religion, like human society 
itself, follows a law of progress and growth ; and 
this law may be trusted, in a well-governed, sound, 
and progressive community, advancing in intelligence 
and culture, to clear away the accretions and the 
superstitions which have gathered round religion. 
In short, to the retention and aggravation of the 
mischiefs of the Catholic system — its Ultramontanism, 
sacerdotalism, superstition — the great auxiliaries are 
ill -government, vice, ignorance. Ultramontanism, 
sacerdotalism, and superstition a good statesman 
must desire and hope to be rid of, but he cannot 
extirpate them off-hand, he must let their natural 
counteractors have play. And their natural counter- 
actors are freedom^ good government, sound morals, 
intelligence. With the help of these they may be 
got rid of, but not without. 

But when Ultramontanism, sacerdotalism, and 
superstition are gone, Catholicism is not, as some 
may suppose, gone too. Neither is it left with nothing 
further but what it possesses in common with all 
the forms of Christianity, — the curative power of the 
word, character, and influence of Jesus. It is, indeed, 
left with this, which is the root of the matter, but it 
is left with a mighty power besides. It is left with 



III.] IRISH CATHOLICISM & BRITISH LIBERALISM. 89 

the beauty, the richness, the poetry, the infinite charm 
for the imagination, of its own age-long gi'owth, a 
growth such as we have described, — unconscious, 
popular, profoundly rooted, all-enveloping. 

It is the sure sign of a shallow mind, to suppose 
that the strength of the Catholic Church is really in 
its tone of absolute certainty concerning its dogmas, 
in its airs of omniscience. On the contrary, as ex- 
perience widens, as the scientific and dogmatic pre- 
tensions of the Church become more manifestly illusory, 
its tone of certitude respecting them, so unguarded, 
so reiterated, and so grossly calculated for immediate 
and vulgar eflect, will be an embarrassment to it. 
The gain to-day, the efi'ect upon a certain class of 
minds, will be found to be more than counterbalanced 
by the embarrassment to-morrow. No doubt there 
are pious souls to-day which are edified and fortified 
at being told by Cardinal Manning that "whoever 
does not in his heart receive and believe the doctrine 
of the Immaculate Conception, as defined by the 
supreme authority of the Church, does by that very 
fact cease to be a Catholic ; " and that " in the Ency- 
clical Ineffabilis Deus, of the 8th of December 185rt, 
the Sovereign Pontiff", the supreme authority of the 
Church, defined that the most blessed Virgin Mary 
was, by a singular grace and privilege of Almighty 
God, and by reason of the merits of Jesus Christ, 
the Saviour of mankind, preserved in the first moment 
of her conception free from all stain of original sin." 
But even in Catholics the irrepressible question will 
arise: "How can he possibly know?" Then the 
solemnity of the assurance will turn out to be a 
weakness, not a strength. Monsignor Capel may 
elate his auditory to-day by telling them that Protest- 
ants are more and more discovering that their Bible, 
which they used to oppose to the Catholic's Church, 



90 MIXED ESSAYS. [iii. 

is not infallible. How delightful, think his devout 
hearers, to have an infallible Church, since the Bible 
is not infallible ! But sooner or later will come the 
irrepressible question : "Is there, can there be, either 
an infallible Bible or an infallible Church 1 " What 
a ridiculous argument will the argument, Because there 
exists no infallible Bible, there must exist an infallible 
Church, be then perceived to be ! It is like arguing : 
Because there are no fairies, therefore there must be 
gnomes. There are neither fairies nor gnomes, but 
nature and the course of nature. 

Its dogma and its confident assertion of its dogma 
are no more a real source of strength and permanence 
to the Catholic Church than its Ultramontanism. Its 
real superiority is in its charm for the imagination, — 
its poetry. I persist in thinking that Catholicism 
has, from this superiority, a great future before it ; 
that it will endure while all the Protestant sects (in 
which I do not include the Church of England) dis- 
solve and perish. I persist in thinking that the pre- 
vailing form for the Christianity of the future will be 
the form of Catholicism ; but a Catholicism purged, 
opening itself to the light and air, having the con- 
sciousness of its own poetry, freed from its sacerdotal 
despotism and freed from its pseudo-scientific appar- 
atus of superannuated dogma. Its forms will be 
retained, as symbolising with the force and charm of 
poetry a few cardinal facts and ideas, simple indeed, 
but indispensable and inexhaustible, and on which 
our race could lay hold only by materialising them. 

From this ideal future of Catholicism, truly, few 
countries can be farther removed than the Ireland of 
the present day. All the mischiefs of Catholicism 
are rampant there. Irish Catholicism is Ultramon- 
tane, priest-governed, superstitious, self-confident. It 
could hardly be otherwise. The Irish Catholic has 



in.] lEISH CATHOLICISM & BRITISH LIBERALISM. 91 

no public education beyond the elementary school. 
His priests are educated in the closest of seminaries. 
The national sense has been so managed in him by 
us, with our oppression and ill -government, that 
national sense as a member of our nation and empire 
he has none. His national sense is that of a conquered 
people, held down by a superior force of aliens, and 
glad to conspire against them with Eome or with any 
one else. If we want the Irish to be less supersti- 
tious, less priest-governed, less Ultramontane, let us 
do what is likely to serve this end. The Irish will 
use Catholic schools and no other. Let us give them 
secondary and higher Catholic schools with a public 
character. They have at present no secondary schools 
with a public character. As public higher schools 
the Queen's Colleges have been offered to them ; but 
they will not use the Queen's Colleges, any more 
than we, either, are disposed to use colleges of that 
type. The Catholic layman has, therefore, neither 
secondary nor higher school; the priest has for a 
higher school Maynooth, a close seminary. What an 
admirable and likely cure is this for Irish ignorance, 
sacerdotalism, Ultramontanism, and disaffection ! 

Let us try, at any rate, a more hopeful treatment. 
Let us make no needless difficulties for ourselves by 
pulling to pieces what is established and what is 
working well. The distinguished past and the hon- 
ourable present of Trinity College, Dublin, as well as 
the large proportion of the wealth and property of 
Ireland which bebngs to Protestants, amply justify 
its continuance. The endowed secondary schools of 
Ireland are Protestant. It is alleged that the endow- 
ments are wasted, and that a share in some of them, 
at any rate, belongs by right to Catholics. Let waste 
and abuse be put an end to, and let Catholics have 
that share in the endowments which belongs to them ; 



92 MIXED ESSAYS. [in. 

but here, too, let us be unwilling to disturb what is 
established, what is consonant with the terms of the 
endowment, and what is working well. Their legal 
share in the actual endowed schools of Ireland is not 
likely to afford to Catholics the supply of education 
needed ; while schools of the type of those old 
endowed schools are, besides, not so desirable for 
them as schools of a more directly public institution 
and character. Let us give them public schools. 

A clearing and enlarging spirit is in the air ; all 
the influences of the time help it. Wherever the 
pressure of the time and of collective human life can 
make itself felt, and therefore in all public and 
national institutions for education, the spirit works. 
The one way to prevent or adjourn its working is to 
keep education what is called a hole-and-corner affair, 
cut off from the public life of the nation and the main 
current of its thoughts, in the hands of a clique who 
have been narrowly educated themselves. Irish 
Catholicism has been entirely dissociated from the 
public life of the country, has been left to be an 
entirely private concern of the persons attached to it. 
Its education has been kept a hole-and-corner thing, 
with its teachers neither of public appointment nor 
designated by public opinion as eminent men. We 
have prevented all access of the enlarging influences 
of the time to either teacher or taught. Well, but 
what has been the consequence ? Has Irish Catholi- 
cism died out because of this wholesome neglect by 
the State ? Among no people is their religion so 
vigorous and pervasive. Has it fewer faults and 
disadvantages than Catholicism in countries where 
Catholic education is publicly instituted ? In no 
country, probably, is Catholicism so crude, blind, and 
unreasoning as in Ireland. The public institution of 
Catholic education in Ireland is not only, therefore. 



111.] IRISH CATHOLICISM & BRITISH LIBERALISM. 93 

what the Irish themselves want ; it is also just the 
v^Ty thing to do them good. 

The public institution of Catholic education with 
the proper and necessary guarantees. Our news- 
papers always assume that Catholic education must 
be "under complete clerical control." AVe are re- 
minded that the Irish bishops claimed from Lord 
Mayo the entire government of their Irish university, 
the right of veto on the appointment of professors, 
the right of dismissing professors. This would make 
the university simply a religious seminary with a 
State payment. But the State has no right, even if 
it had the wish, to abandon its duties towards a 
national university in this manner. The State, in 
such a university, is proctor for the nation. The 
appointment and dismissal of the professors belong 
to no corporation less large and public than the nation 
itself; and it is best in the hands of the nation, and 
not made over to any smaller and closer corporation 
like the clergy, however respectable. The professors 
should be nominated and removed, not by the bishops, 
but by a responsible minister of State acting for the 
Irish nation itself. They should be Catholics, but he 
should choose them ; exercising his choice as a judi- 
cious Catholic would be disposed to exercise it, who 
had to act in the name and for the benefit of the 
whole community. While the bishops, if they have 
the appointment of professors in a Catholic universit}', 
will be prone to ask : " Who will suit the bishops ? " 
the community, or the minister representing it, is 
interested in asking solely : " Who is the best and 
most distinguished Catholic for the chair ] " 

In the interest of the Irish themselves, therefore, 
the professors in a publicly instituted Catholic uni- 
versity ought to be nominated by a minister of State, 
acting under a public responsibility, and proctor for 



94 MIXED ESSAYS. [in. 

the Irish nation. Would Ireland reject a Catholic 
university ofifered with such a condition ^ I do not 
believe it. At any rate, if we offered it, and if Ire- 
land refused it, our conscience would be clear; for 
only with such a condition can the State fairly and 
rightly bestow a university. At present the Roman 
Catholic hierarchy perceive that the Government 
cannot seriously negotiate with them, because it is 
controlled by popular prejudice and unreason. In 
any parleyings, therefore, they feel themselves free to 
play at a mere game of brag, and to advance con- 
fidently pretensions the most exorbitant, because they 
are sure that nothing reasonable can be done. But 
once break resolutely with the prejudice and un- 
reason ; let it be clear that the Government can and 
will treat with the Irish Catholics for the public 
institution of a Cathohc university such as they 
demand, such as they have a right to, such as in 
other Protestant countries Cathohcs enjoy. "Would 
the Irish bishops prove impracticable ilien^ or would 
Ireland allow them to be so, even if they were so 
inclined? I do not believe it. I believe that a 
wholesome national feeling, thus reasonably appealed 
to, would be found to spring up and respond ; and 
that here we should have the first instalment of the 
many ameliorations which the public establishment of 
Catholic education is calculated to produce in Ireland. 
This is so evident, that no one in Great Britain 
with clear and calm political judgment, or with fine 
perception, or with high cultivation, or with large 
knowledge of the world, doubts it. Statesmen see 
it, the aristocracy see it, the important class which 
we have to thank Mr. Charles Sumner for noting, — 
the large class of gentlemen, not of the squirearchy 
or nobility, but cultivated and refined, — they see it 
too. The populace know and care nothing about the 



III.] IRISH CATHOLICISM & BRITISH LIBERALISM. 95 

matter. And yet there is in one quarter, — in the 
British middle class, — a force of prejudice on this 
subject so strong and so rooted, that we are bidden 
to recognise the futility of contending with it, and to 
treat the claims of the Irish Catholics for a Catholic 
university as inconsistent with the practical conditions 
of politics. 

This it is which is, indeed, calculated to drive the 
Irish to rage and despair. If the English race may 
be said, by one speaking favourably of it but not 
extravagantly, to be characterised by energy and 
honesty, the Irish race may be described, in like 
manner, as being characterised by sentiment and 
perception. And they find themselves sacrificed to 
the prejudices of a class which they see, as the rest 
of the world sees it, to be, in its present state, imper- 
fectly civilised and impossible ; a class ill-educated as 
the Irish middle class itself, knowing how to make 
money, but not knowing how to live when they have 
made it ; and in short, of the powers which, as we 
saw when we were discussing Equality, go to con- 
stitute civilisation, — the powers of conduct, intellect, 
beauty, manners, — laying hold upon one only, the 
power of conduct. But for this factor in civilisation 
the Irish, in the first place, have by nature not suffi- 
cient sympathy, and it comes up in our middle class 
so strangely misgrown and disguised that strangers 
may easily fail to recognise it ; and then besides, of 
the sense for conduct in our middle class, though the 
sense is there, the Irish have really had no experience 
at all, but have had a long experience of this class as 
unjust, hard, and cruel. And they see that our 
government and upper class quite share their opinions 
about this class, but that we have a system which 
requires that the upper class should be cultivated and 
attractive and should govern, and that the middle 



96 MIXED ESSAYS. [iii. 

class should be, as it is, impossible, but that it should 
be flattered and humoured; and therefore to the 
deep-rooted prejudices of the middle class against 
Catholicism Ireland must be sacrificed. But the 
Irish are quite out of this singular game, which our 
notorious passion for inequality makes us play with 
such zest in England ; they cannot appreciate its 
ways and laws. All they feel is that they are kept 
from having what they want, and what is fair, and 
w^hat we have ourselves, because the British middle 
class, being such as we have described it, pronounces 
their religion to be a lie and heathenish superstition. 

Now I am here pouring out my heart to advanced 
Liberals, in my joy at their sound and hopeful vote 
on the O'Conor Don's resolution. I am sure that 
Sir Charles Dilke does not suppose that Mr. Arthur 
or Mr. Spurgeon is in possession of the truth in some 
eminent way, compared with which the tenets of Lacor- 
daire, for instance, were a lie and heathenish superstition. 
Each, Sir Charles Dilke would probably say, can at 
most but be pronounced free from some bondage still 
confining the mind of the other ; Mr. Arthur and Mr. 
Spurgeon from the delusion of an infallible church, 
and Lacordaire from the jungle of the justification 
theology. But then I, on my part, must ask leave to 
say that they all, nevertheless, possess as their founda- 
tion, however overlaid, a germ of inestimable power 
for lifting human life out of misery and servitude, and 
for assuring its felicity. And Sir Charles Dilke, 
again, is thereupon likely to rejoin that this may 
possibly be so, but that the whole natural history of 
that germ, the whole philosophy of the thing, as they 
and theirs have constructed it for themselves, is, with 
all of them alike, a construction utterly fantastic and 
hollow ; the Quicunque vult like the Westminster Con- 
fession, and the Tridentine Decrees like the Thirty- 



III.] IRISH CATHOLICISM & BRITISH LIBERALISM. 97 

nine Articles. Bits, he will say, the Protestant may 
have more right than the Catholic, and in other bits, 
again, the Catholic may have the advantage ; and the 
being right on some points may happen to contribute 
more help towards making progress on the line of 
liberty, let us say, or industry, than the being right 
on others. But the whole philosophy of the thing is 
fantastic in both. And if Sir Charles Dilke chooses 
to say this, I shall not contend with him ; for I hate 
contention, and besides, I do not know that I much 
disagree with him. 

So I shall acquiesce and say : Well, then, let us be 
agreed. Both Catholic and Protestant have the germ, 
both Catholic and Protestant have a false philosophy 
of the germ. But Catholicism has the germ invested 
in an immense poetry, the gradual work of time and 
nature, and of that great impersonal artist, Catholic 
Christendom. And here it has the superiority over 
Protestantism. So that when the British Puritan 
prevents our doing justice to the Irish Catholic be- 
cause his religion is, says the Puritan, a lie and 
heathenish superstition^ the Irish Catholic is conscious 
that he has the germ like the Puritan; that the 
philosophy of the germ those who prate of such 
things would allow neither that he nor that the 
Puritan has, but he has it, they would allow, quite 
as much as the Puritan; while in the beauty and 
poetry of his clothing of the germ he has an im- 
measurable superiority. And he is not to have a 
Catholic university because, though this is so, and 
though all the world except the British middle class 
see it to be so, this class must be humoured and 
flattered by the governing class in England, and its 
mail of prejudice is impenetrable ! Let Sir Charles 
Dilke ask himself with what feelings this state of 
things would fill him, if he were an Irishman afl'ected 

VOL. IV. H 



98 MIXED ESSAYS. [iii. 

by it. But he has asked himself, and hence his vote. 
It would be likely to fill him, he saw, with rage and 
despair ; and when his mind dwelt on it he might 
even be inclined, instead of marvelling at the extra- 
vagance of Mr. Biggar and Mr. Parnell and the other 
obstructionists, rather to chafe at their moderation. 

But then, if Sir Charles Dilke and his friends wish 
to have truth and nature on their side in their politi- 
cal labours, and to bring them to a happy end, they 
ought to proceed boldly and unwaveringly in the 
excellent course which by their vote on the 0' Conor 
Don's resolution they have begun. The present 
government leans naturally for its support upon the 
feeling of the upper class, and to the just claims of 
Ireland in the matter of education the feeling of this 
class is not opposed. If the present government, 
therefore, should show a disposition to do justice to 
Ireland in this matter, let the advanced Liberals, who 
have so well begun, steadily support the government 
in such a disposition, and steadily refuse, in this 
question, for the sake of snatching a party advantage, 
to trade upon the baneful fund of middle-class pre- 
judice, which is so easy and so tempting to use even 
while one despises it. There will be plenty of other 
occasions on which the pursuit of the true Liberal 
ideal must inevitably bring Liberals into conflict with 
the present government, and with the feeling of the 
upper class. But on this particular question for a 
Liberal to thwart the government, if the government 
were inclined to do what Ireland justly desires, would 
be to put himself into conflict with truth and nature, 
and, therefore, with the Liberal ideal itself. 

And how can I forbear adding, — though the space 
which remains to me is short, and though on this 
subject Mr. Chamberlain will be hard to persuade, and 



III.] IRISH CATHOLICISM & BRITISH LIBERALISM. 99 

he may still be under the spell, besides, of that recent 
article by Mr. Jenkins in the Fortnightly Review, — yet 
how can I forbear adding that the same considerations 
of the sure loss and defeat at last, from coming into 
conflict with truth and nature, ought to govern the 
action of Liberals as to the disestablishment of the 
Church of England, and to make this action other 
than what it now is 1 For if to the building up of 
human life and civilisation there go these four powers, 
the power of conduct, the power of intellect and 
knowledge, the power of beauty, and the power of 
social life and manners, and if to the disengagement 
and strengthening and final harmony of these powers 
we are pushed by the instinct of self-preservation in 
humanity, then to go against any one of them is to go 
against truth and nature. And the case for the 
Church of England is really, in respect of its Puritan 
reproachers and attackers, just like that of the Church 
of Rome, and has the same sort of natural strength. 
The Church of England has the germ of Christianity 
like its attackers ; the philosophy of the germ (so we 
understood Sir Charles Dilke to say) neither the 
Church nor its attackers have ; in the beauty and 
poetry of its clothing of the germ, the Church has an 
immeasurable superiority. Joseph de Maistre, that 
ardent Catholic, remarked that the Church of England 
was the only one of the Reformation Churches which 
still showed promise and vitality ; and he attributed 
this superiority to its retention of bishops. Sir 
Charles Dilke will probably say that this is one of 
those explanations which explain nothing. But 
suppose we fill out the term bishops a little, and 
understand the retention of bishops to mean that the 
Church of England, while getting rid of Ultramon- 
tanism, and of many other things plainly perceived to 
be false or irksome, yet kept in great measure the 



100 MIXED ESSAYS. [ill. 

traditional form of Catholicism, and thus preserved 
its link with the past, its share in the beauty and the 
poetry and the charm for the imagination of Catholi- 
cism, — its inheritance in all that work of ages, and 
of nature, and of popular instinct, and of the great 
impersonal artist whom we can only name Catholic 
Christendom. Then in the retention of bishops, thus 
explained, we arrive at a real superiority, — a superi- 
ority in beauty. 

And if one man's notion of beauty were as good 
as another's, and there were not an instinct of self- 
preservation in humanity working upwards towards 
a real beauty, then this superiority would be of no 
avail. But now Nature herself fights against the 
Puritan, with his services of religion such as they 
visibly are, — free from all touch or suspicion of the 
great impersonal artist, but just what the British 
middle class, left to itself, might be expected to make 
them ; while his intellectual conception of religion is 
no more adequate than the conception current in the 
Church, or indeed is even less adequate, since a great 
public body is more open to the enlarging influences 
of the time. And so the Church of England is likely 
to grow stronger rather than weaker. The desire to 
keep it a public institution will grow stronger rather 
than weaker. The more its superiority to the sects 
is perceived, and the source of this superiority, the 
stronger will be the desire to continue that public 
institution of it which gives more weight, solemnity, 
and grandeur to religion, which makes religion less 
like a thing of private fancy or invention. The 
community will "vdsh religion to be a thing which 
may grow according to their needs, and be adminis- 
tered according to their needs ; and also to be a 
thing of public institution, removed from the freaks 
of private caprice, ignorance, and vulgarity. 



III.] IRISH CATHOLICISM & BEITISH LIBERALISM. 101 

People, therefore, will use the germ of curative 
power which lies in Christianity, because they cannot 
do without it ; and the intellectual conception they 
will shape for themselves as they can ; and for beauty 
and poetry of religious service they will go to the 
Church. There have been a few Liberals, such as 
Sir John Lubbock, in whom the scientific spirit was 
so strong that they wanted fairly to know how things 
stood and how many adherents the Church numbered 
even now, and to get a religious census taken. But 
in general it fared with the religious census as it 
fared with the Catholic university for Ireland; 
Liberals recognised the futility of contending against 
rooted Puritan prejudice. However, if the present 
government remain in office, a religious census will, 
one may hope, be taken ; and that is one good reason, 
at any rate, for wishing stabihty to the present 
government. It is dangerous to prophesy; yet I 
will venture to prophesy, and to say that if a religious 
census is taken, the majority in England ranging 
themselves with the Church will be found to be 
overwhelming, and the Dissenters will be found much 
less numerous than they give themselves out to be. 

But I must end. Out of gratitude for the pleasure 
given to me by the Liberal votes for the O'Conor 
Don's resolution, I have been endeavouring to caution 
my benefactors against the common Liberal error of 
supposing that all the influences of truth and nature 
are against Catholicism, whether on the Continent or 
in Ireland, and against the Established Church in 
England. On the contrary, they are, many of them, 
in their favour. They are, many of them, against 
the Puritan and Nonconformist cause, which, in this 
country. Liberals are always tempted to think them- 
selves safe in supporting. The need for beauty is a 
real and now rapidly growing need in man ; Puritan- 



102 MIXED ESSAYS. [iii. 

ism cannot Statisfy it, Catholicism and the English 
Church can. The need for intellect and knowledge 
in him, indeed, neither Puritanism, nor Catholicism, 
nor the English Church can at present satisfy. That 
need has to seek satisfaction nowadays elsewhere, — 
through the modern spirit, science, literature. But, 
as one drops the false science of the Churches, one 
perceives that what they had to deal with was so 
simple that it did not require science. Their beauty 
remains, investing certain elementary truths of ines- 
timable depth and value, yet of extreme simplicity. 
Bat the Puritan Churches have no beauty. This 
makes the difficulty of maintaining the Established 
Church of Scotland. Once drop the false science on 
which successive generations of Scotchmen have so 
vainly valued themselves, once convince oneself that 
the Westminster Confession, whatever Principal 
Tulloch may think, is a document absolutely anti- 
quated, sterile, and worthless, and what remains to 
the Church of Scotland 1 Besides the simple ele- 
mentary truths present in all forms of Christianity, 
there remains to the Church of Scotland merely 
that which remains to the Free Church, to the 
United Presbyterians, to Puritanism in general, — a 
religious service which is perhaps the most dismal 
performance ever invented by man. It is here that 
Catholicism and the Church of England have such a 
real superiority ; and nothing can destroy it, and the 
present march of things is even favourable to it. 
Let Liberals do their best to open Catholicism and 
the Church of England to all the enlarging influences 
of the time, to make tyranny and vexaticusness on 
the part of their clergy impossible j but do not let 
them think they are to be destroyed, nor treat them 
as their natural enemies. 

Perhaps Lord Granville has come a little late in 



III.] lEISH CATHOLICISM & BEITISH LIBEKALISM. 103 

life to the consideration of these matters, and assumes 
over-hastily that because the alliance with the Dis- 
senters persecuted was valuable for the Liberal party, 
the alliance with the Dissenters aggressive must be 
valuable for them too. Let him bring his acute 
mind to see the thing as it really is. He is for 
admitting, in a public rite, the services of Dissent on 
the same footing as the services of the Church of 
England. But let him accustom himself to attend 
both, and he will perceive what the difference between 
the services is. The difference is really very much 
the difference between a reading from Milton and a 
reading from Eliza Cook, — a poetess, I hasten to add, 
of wide popularity, full of excellent sentiments, of 
appeals to the love of liberty, country, home. And 
for a long while the English Church, with the State 
to back her, committed the fatal mistake of trying to 
compel everj^body to forsake the reading of Eliza 
Cook and come to the reading of Milton ; nay, to 
declare that they utterly abjured Eliza Cook, and 
that they preferred Milton. And sometimes, when 
it would have suited a man to come to the reading 
of Milton, they would not let him, if he and his 
family had ever preferred Eliza Cook. This was the 
time of the strong and fruitful alliance of the Whigs 
with Dissent. It may be said to have closed with 
the death of a man whom we all admired, Lord 
Eussell. He established the right of the Dissenters 
to be not cross-questioned and persecuted about the 
preferability of Milton to Eliza Cook ; they were to 
be free to prefer which they pleased. Yet Milton 
remains Milton, and Eliza Cook remains Eliza Cook. 
And a public rite, with a reading of Milton attached 
to it, is another thing from a public rite with a 
reading from Eliza Cook. The general sentiment 
has gone heartily with Lord Eussell in leaving the 



104 MIXED ESSAYS. [in. 

Dissenters perfectly free to prefer and use Eliza Cook 
as much as they please ; but is it certain that it will 
be found equally to go with Lord Granville in letting 
them import her into a public rite ? 

Not in this direction, I think, shall we do well to 
seek to extend the conquests of Liberalism. They 
are to be extended on other lines, some of them 
hardly entered upon at present. It is a long time 
since last February, and things are easily forgotten ; 
let me, therefore, recall to my Liberal benefactors 
what I said at the Eoyal Institution last February, 
that the excesses to which our love of inequality has 
carried us have ended in materialising our upper 
class, vulgarising our middle class, and brutalising 
our lower class ; and that they do this, if we will 
look at the thing simply, by a kind of necessary and 
fatal operation, throwing the middle class, — to speak 
now of that one class only, — in upon itself, and 
giving it over to the narrownesses, and prejudices, 
and hideousnesses, which many people regard as 
incurable, but which are not. And therefore, for the 
good of the whole community, and by no means from 
any enmity to the upper class, — who are indeed 
better than one could have thought their circum- 
stances would allow them to be, and who are much 
more pricked by an uneasy consciousness of being 
materialised, than the middle class are of being 
vulgarised, or the lower of being brutalised, — Liberals 
would do well to set seriously about the reform of 
our law of bequest and inheritance. Another object 
for them is the establishment of a system of public 
schools for the middle class, such as in all other 
civilised countries it enjoys, but which alike in 
England and in Ireland is wanting. The Times 
itself, though too prone to "recognise the futility of 
contending against rooted prejudices," is yet "con- 



III.] IRISH CATHOLICISM & BRITISH LIBERALISM. 105 

vinced that one of the best guarantees for the stability 
and progress of society is the influence of an educated 
middle class." The Times is indeed here speaking of 
Ireland, but this influence is just what in England, 
no less than in Ireland, is so sadly wanting ; and the 
Irish, if they are to be ruled by our middle class, 
have at least a right to supplicate us, in Mr. Lowe's 
words, to "educate their masters." And the real 
obstacle to the establishment of public schools for the 
middle class is, that both the upper and the middle 
class have a lurking sense that by such schools the 
middle class would be transformed j and the upper 
class do not care to be disturbed in their preponder- 
ance, or the middle class in their vulgarity. To 
convince the one resistance of its selfishness, and the 
other of its folly, should be the aim of all true Liberals. 
Finally, Liberals should remember that the country 
districts throughout England have their municipal 
organisation still to get ; that they have at present 
only the feudal and ecclesiastical organisation of the 
Middle Ages. Nothing struck me more than this, on 
my return to England after seeing the Continental 
schools for the people, and the communal basis on 
which everything there rested. Our agricultural 
labourer will doubtless have the franchise, and that 
is well ; but how much more constant and sure a 
training for him than that of the franchise is the 
public life in common of a true municipal system 
universally difi'used ! To this, rather than to the 
institution in our country churchyards of readings from 
Eliza Cook, Liberals might with much advantage turn 
their thoughts. Still the great work to be done in 
this country, and at this hour, is not with the lower 
class, but with the middle ; a work of raising its 
whole level of civilisation, and, in order to do this, 
of transforming the British Puritan. 



106 MIXED ESSAYS. [iil. 

Hume relates that the well-kno-^n Praise God 
Barebones had a brother less famous than himself, 
but with a yet more singular name. He was called : 
" If Christ had not died for thee thou wert damned 
Barebones." But to go through all this was a 
terribly long business, and so the poor man came to 
be called simply : Damned Barebones. And the mis- 
fortune of this poor owner of an edifying name comes 
to one's mind when one thinks of what is happening 
now to the Puritan middle class. After all its 
sermons, all its victories, all its virtues, all its care 
for conduct, all its zeal for righteousness, to be told 
that it must transform itself, that the body of which 
it is the nerve and sinew is at a low level of 
civilisation ! But so great and wide a thing is 
human progress; tentatives, approximations, hold 
good only for a certain time, and bring us only a 
certain way on our road ; then they have to be 
changed. Happy the workers whose way and work 
have to be changed only, not abolished ! The 
Puritan middle class, with all its faults, is still the 
best stuff in this nation. Some have hated and 
persecuted it, many have flattered and derided it, — 
Mattered it that while they deride it they may use it; 
I have believed in it. It is the best stuff in this 
nation, and in its success is our best hope for the 
future. But to succeed it must be transformed. 



IV. 

POEEO UNUM EST KECESSAEIUM. 

An acute French critic says that a wise man's best 
happiness is to be found, perhaps, in his having the 
sense de ne pas ttre dupe^ of not being taken in. At 
any rate, we may allow that such happiness is better 
than none at all, and sometimes it is the only happi- 
ness within our reach. Certainly it is the only 
happiness to which the would-be reformer of secondary 
instruction in England can at present pretend. 

There has just appeared in the French Journal 
Officiel a report by M. Bardoux, the Minister of Public 
Instruction, on the present state of the secondary 
schools in France, and on their movement since 1865, 
the date of a like decennial report on them by M. 
Duruy. With an interest not unmixed with the 
sense of defeat and weakness, I have studied this 
picture of the schools of that immense class of society, 
which in France has even more greatness and extent 
than with us, — the middle class. Yes, the schools 
for this class are indeed, as the French themselves 
say, the keystone of a country's whole system of 
public instruction : they are what fixes and maintains 
the intellectual level of a people. And in our country 
they have been left to come forth as they could and 
to form themselves at haphazard, and are now, as a 



108 MIXED ESSAYS. [iv. 

whole, in the most serious degree inadequate and 
unsatisfactory. For some twenty years I have been 
full of this thought, and have striven to make the 
British public share it with me ; but quite vainly. 
At this hour, in Mr. Gladstone's programme of the 
twenty-two engagements of the Liberal party, there is 
not a word of middle-class education. Twenty-two 
Liberal engagements, and the reform of middle-class 
education not one of them ! What a blow for the 
declining age of a sincere but ineffectual Liberal, 
who so long ago as 1859 wrote with faith and ardour 
the words following, — buried in a blue-book, and 
now disinterred to show the vanity of human 
wishes : — 

" Let me be permitted to call the attention of Englishmen to 
the advantage which. France possesses in its vast system of 
public secondary instruction ; in its 63 lyceums and 244 com- 
munal colleges, inspected by the State, aided by the State ; 
drawing from this connection with the State both efficiency and 
dignity ; and to which, in concert with the State, the depart- 
ments and the communes and private benevolence all co-operate 
to provide free admission for poor and deserving scholars. M. 
de Talleyrand said that the education of the great English 
public schools was the best in the world. He added, to be 
sure, that even this was detestable. But allowing it aU its 
merits ; how small a portion of the population does it embrace ! 
It embraces the aristocratic class, it embraces the higher pro- 
fessional class, it embraces a certain number from the richer 
families of the commercial class ; from the great body of the 
commercial class and of the immense middle-class of this country, 
it embraces hardly one. They are left to an education which, 
though among its professors are many excellent and honourable 
men, is deplorable. Our middle- classes are among the worst 
educated in the world. But it is not this only ; although, 
when I consider this, all the French commonplaces about the 
duty of the State to protect children from the charlatanism 
and cupidity of individual speculation seem to me to be justified. 
It is far more that a great opportunity is missed of fusing all 



IV.] PORRO UNUM EST NECESSARIUM. 109 

the upper and middle classes into one po-werfal whole, elevating 
and refining the middle-classes by the contact and stimulating 
the upper. In France this is what the system of public 
secondary education efifects ; it efiaces between the middle and 
upper classes the sense of social alienation ; it gives to the boy 
of the middle -class the studies, the superior teaching, the 
sense of belonging to a great school, which the Eton or Harrow 
boy has with us ; it tends to give to the middle-classes precisely 
what they most want, and their want of which makes the 
great gulf betAveen them and the upper, — it tends to give them 
personal dignity. The power of such an education is seen in 
what it has done for the professional classes in England. The 
clergy, and barristers, and officers of both services, who have 
commonly passed through the great public schools, are nearly 
identified in thought, feeling, and manners with the aristocratic 
class. They have not been unmixed gainers by this identifica- 
tion ; it has too much isolated them from a class to which by 
income and social position they, after all, naturally belong ; 
while towards the highest class it has made them, not vulgarly 
servile, certainly, but intellectually too deferential, too little 
apt to maintain entire mental independence on questions where 
the prepossessions of that class are concerned. Nevertheless 
they have, as a class, acquired the unspeakable benefit of that 
elevation of the mind and feelings which it is the best office 
of superior education to confer. But they have bought this 
elevation at an immense money-price, — at a price which they 
can no better than the commercial classes afi"ord to pay ; which 
they who have paid it long, and who know what it has bought 
for them, will continue to pay while they must, but which the 
mass of the middle-classes will never even begin to pay. Either 
the education of this mass must remain what it is, vulgar and 
unsound ; or the State must create by its legislation, its aid, its 
inspection, institutions honourable because of their public 
character, and cheap because nationally frequented, in which 
they may receive a better. The French middle - classes may 
well be taxed for the education of the poor, since public 
provision has already been made for their own education. But 
already there are complaints among the lower middle - classes 
of this country that the Committee of Council is providing the 
poor with better schools than those to which they themselves 



110 MIXED ESSAYS. [iv. 

have access. The Education Commissioners would excite, I 
am convinced, in thousands of hearts, a gratitude of which 
they little dream, if in presenting the result of their labours on 
primary instruction they were at the same time to say to the 
government : * Kegard the necessities of a not distant future, 
and organise your secondary instruction.^" 

The emotions of gratitude here promised were 
suffered to slumber on unawakened. This was in 
1859. In 1865, having again been sent to visit the 
schools of the Continent, I struck the same note once 
more : — 

*' Neither is the secondary and superior instruction given in 
England so good on the whole, if we regard the whole number 
of those to whom it is due, as that given in Germany or France, 
nor is it given in schools of so good a standing. Of course, 
what good instruction there is, and what schools of good stand- 
ing there are to get it in, fall chiefly to the lot of the upper- 
class. It is on the middle-class that the injury, such as it is, 
of getting inferior instruction, and of getting it in schools of 
infeiior standing, mainly comes. This injury, as it strikes 
one after seeing attentively the schools of the Continent, has 
two aspects. It has a social aspect, and it has an intellectual 
aspect. 

"The social injury is this. On the Continent the upper and 
middle class are brought up on one and the same plane. In 
England the middle-class, as a rule, is brought up on the second 
plane. One hears many discussions as to the limits between 
the middle and the upper class in England. From a social and 
educational point of view these limits are perfectly clear. Ten 
or a dozen famous schools, Oxford or Cambridge, the church or 
the bar, the army or navy, and those posts in the public service 
supposed to be posts for gentlemen, — these are the lines of 
training, all or any of which give a cast of ideas, a stamp or 
habit, which make a sort of association of all those who share 
them ; and this association is the upper-class. Except by one of 
these modes of access, an Englishman does not, unless by some 
special play of aptitude or of circumstances, become a vital part 
of this association, for he does not bring with him the cast of 
ideas in which its bond of union lies. This cast of ideas is 



IV.] PORRO UNUM EST NECESSARIUM. Ill 

naturally in the main that of the most powerful and prominent 
part of the association, — the aristocracj'. The professions 
furnish the more numerous but the less prominent part ; in no 
country, accordingly, do the professions so naturally and 
generally share the cast of ideas of the aristocracy as in England. 
Judged from its bad side, this cast of ideas is characterised by 
over-reyerence for things established, by an estrangement from 
the powers of reason and science. Judged from its good side, 
it is characterised by a high spirit, by dignity, by a just sense 
of the greatness of great affairs^ — all of them governing qualities ; 
and the professions have accordingly long recruited the governing 
force of the aristocracy, and assisted it to rule. But they are 
separate, to a degree unknown on the Continent, from the 
commercial and industrial classes with which in a social stand- 
ing they are naturally on a level. So we have amongst us the 
spectacle of a middle-class cut in two in a way unexampled 
anywhere else ; of a professional class brought up on the first 
plane, with fine and governing qualities, but disinclined to rely 
on reason and science ; while that immense business class, 
which is becoming so important a power in all countries, on 
which the future so much depends, and which in the gi-eat 
public schools of other countries fills so large a place, is in 
England brought up on the second plane, cut off from the 
aristocracy and the professions, and without governing qualities. 

' ' If only, in compensation, it had science, systematic know- 
ledge, reason ! But here comes in the intellectual mischief of 
the bad condition of the mass of our secondary schools. In 
England the business class is not only inferior to the professions 
and aristocracy in the social stamp of its places of ti'aining ; it 
is actually inferior to them, maimed and incomplete as their 
development of reason is, in its development of reason. Short 
as the offspring of our public schools and universities come of 
the idea of science and systematic knowledge, the oflspring of 
our middle-class academies probably come, if that be possible, 
even shorter. What these academies fail to give in social and 
governing qualities, they do not make up for in intellectual 
power. Their intellectual result is as fault}'' as their social 
result. 

' ' If this be true, then, that our middle-class does not yet 
itself see the defects of its own education, is not conscious of 



112 MIXED ESSAYS. [iv. 

the injury to itself from tliem, and is satisfied with things as 
they are, is no reason for regarding this state of things without 
disquietude." 

Alas, in 1865, it was hardly permissible even to 
be disquieted at the state of middle-class education ! 
"We must confess to a feeling of shame," cried one 
newspaper, " at the nonsense which is being uttered 
on this subject. It might be thought from what is 
said, that this section of the community, which has 
done everything else so well, which has astonished 
the world by its energy, enterprise, and self-reliance, 
which is continually striking out new paths of industry 
and subduing the forces of nature, cannot, from some 
mysterious reason, get their children properly edu- 
cated!" "All the world knows," cried another, 
" that the great middle class of this country supplies 
the mind, the will, and the power, for all the great 
and good things that have to be done, and it is not 
likely that that class should surrender its powers and 
privileges in the one case of the training of its own 
children. How the idea of such a scheme can have 
occurred to anybody, how it can have been imagined 
that parents and schoolmasters in the most inde- 
pendent and active and enlightened class of English 
society, how it can have been supposed that the class 
which has done all the great things that have been 
done in all departments, will beg the government to 
send inspectors through the schools, when it can 
itself command whatever advantages exist, seems 
almost unintelligible." 

This dithyrambic style about the middle class and 
its schools has, it is true, been dropped for the last 
few years. It seems even a little grotesque as one 
surveys it now ; not " unintelligible " perhaps, but 
somewhat ridiculous. In this respect there is pro- 
gress ; but still middle-class education remains just 



IV.] PORRO UNUM EST NECESSARIUM. 113 

as it was. The commercial travellers or the licensed 
victuallers have the happy thought of making a 
school entirely for children of commercial travellers 
or of licensed victuallers, and royal dukes and 
ministerial earls are still found to go down and bless 
the young institution, and to glorify the energy and 
self-reliance of the commercial travellers and the 
licensed victuallers. A satisfactory system of public 
secondary schools nobody calls for. It finds, as we 
have seen, no place among the twenty-two engage- 
ments of the Liberal party. The newspapers never 
touch the subject. Both upper and middle class 
appear content that their schools should stay as they 
are. And the enthusiast who has had a vision of 
better things is left to console himself with what is 
alleged, certainly, to be the wise man's true satisfac- 
tion — the sense de ne pas ttre dii^e, of not being taken 
in. He has the pleasure, such as it is, of knowing 
that our body of secondary schools is suffered to 
remain the most imperfect and unserviceable in 
civilised Europe, because our upper class does not 
care to be disturbed in its preponderance, or our 
middle class in its vulgarity. 

A report like that of M. Bardoux is calculated, 
however, to make the poor enthusiast restless and 
impatient, to set him asking himself whether the 
middle class in England is really always to be ruled 
by the fatal desire not to be disturbed in its vulgarity, 
whether that class is always to be taken in by grandees 
extolling this desire as energy and self-reliance, and 
whether his own only comfort for ever is to consist 
in not being taken in too. The impulse is irresistible 
to seek to communicate his impatience to others, and 
for this end nothing can be more useful, one would 
think, than simply to retrace the main lines of the 
picture drawn by M. Bardoux. 

VOL. IV. I 



114 mXED ESSAYS. [iv. 

The public secondary schools of France are of two 
kinds, — lycees^ or lyceums, and communal colleges. 
The lycees are maintained by the State. The 
communal colleges are maintained by the municipal- 
ities, but may be aided by the State. The instruction 
in both is of the same type, as to its general features, 
with the instruction given in the great grammar- 
schools of this country. It is classical, with a side 
or department, called by us modern, by the French 
special, by the Germans real, intended to suit the 
requirements of practical life in the present day, by 
teaching the natural sciences and the modern lan- 
guages in place of Greek and Latin. Alike in the 
lydes and in the communal colleges, all the teaching 
staff have to furnish guarantees of their capacity to 
teach the matters of instruction confided to them. 
The guarantee takes generally the form of a 
university degree, varying in kind and in rank 
according to the post to be filled by the holder. 

At the end of 1865, the date to which the report 
of M. Duruy, — the last report previous to M. Bar- 
doux's, — goes down, France had at work 77 lyc4es and 
251 communal colleges. Three of the 77 lydes (those 
of Strasburg, Metz, and Colmar), and 15 of the 251 
communal colleges, have been lost to France in 
consequence of the war of 1870. But new ones 
have in the meanwhile been added, so that on the 
31st of December, 1876, the date to which M. 
Bardoux's report comes down, France had 81 lydes 
at work, with five others building, and 252 com- 
munal colleges. If we deduct Strasburg, Metz, and 
Colmar, which are not now part of the territory of 
France, the French lycies, in 1865, had 31,321 pupils. 
At the end of 1876 they had, for the same extent of 
territory, 40,995 pupils, — an average of 506 pupils 
to each lycee, about half of whom are boarders and 



VI.] POERO UNUM EST NECESSARIUM. 115 

half day-boys. The communal colleges had in 1865 a 
total number of 32,881 pupils, with an average of 131 
pupils to each college; at the end of 1876 they had 
38,236 pupils, with an average of 152 for each college. 

Eighty- one great secondary schools of the first 
class, two hundred and fifty-two of the second, all of 
them with a public character, all of them under 
inspection, all of them offering guarantees of the 
capacity of their teaching staff! and in these schools 
a total of 79,241 scholars! 

Let us note, in passing, that the modern or special 
instruction in these schools is constantly growing. 
The lydes are the stronghold of the classics ; yet in 
the lydes the number of boys on the modern side had 
risen from 5002 at the end of 1865 to 8628 at the 
end of 1876, and the average number of such scholars 
for each lyc4e from 71 to 107. The teaching of the 
natural sciences, of the living languages, of geography, 
modern history, and literature, is being continually 
strengthened. The class of pupils receiving special 
preparation in the lydes for schools such as the 
Polytechnic, Saint Cyr, the Naval, Central, and 
Forest Schools, steadily increases. In the communal 
colleges the development of the modern side is 
much greater still, and is extremely remarkable. Of 
the 38,236 pupils in these colleges at the end of 
1876, 9232 are little boys not yet going beyond 
primary instruction; of the remainder, 14,992 are 
on the classical side, and very nearly as many, 
14,012, are on the modern. The number of teacher- 
ships for the modern languages has more than 
doubled in these colleges since 1865. 

But I am not here writing for schoolmasters and 
specialists, for whose benefit, indeed, I have formerly 
given a full account of the French secondary schools, 
of their organisation and teaching. I am writing 



116 MIXED ESSAYS. [iv. 

now for that great public which is interested in the 
provision of secondary schools for its children ; the 
broad plain lines of the subject are all that they will 
care for, and are what I shall keep to. I repeat, 
then: 81 hjcdes^ 252 communal colleges, with a total 
of nearly 80,000 scholars ; a modern side established, 
and constantly growing; all the schools under in- 
spection, and of all their teachers guarantees of 
capacity required. 

As to the quality of the instruction, it is at the 
same general level as the instruction in our great 
secondary schools which are called public. In Greek 
it is not so strong. In Latin it is much on a par 
with ours, though "vvith a nearer sense of the Latin 
language, because of its affinity with the French. 
In modern languages it is, again, much on a par with 
our instruction. In arithmetic and mathematics, in 
the natural sciences, in modern history, and above all 
in knowledge of the mother-tongue and its literature, 
it is stronger. The boarders are fed and lodged in 
a different mode from the boarders of our public 
schools, but, in my opinion, quite as well. They 
are, however, more confined and harder worked, and 
have less freedom, air, and exercise. This is a dis- 
advantage. But it comes from the dangers of 
confinement and study for boys being less appre- 
hended, the good of play for them less valued, in the 
whole body of Continental schools, whether public or 
private, than they are by us all in England. 

I pass from the public secondary schools to the 
private, — the koles lihres, as the French call them. 
This part of the subject has a peculiar interest for us 
in England, because our secondary instruction is in 
so large a measure supplied by private adventure 
schools. In France the private secondary schools are 
of two kinds, lay and ecclesiastical. There were 803 



IV.] POKEO UNUM EST NECESSARIUM. 117 

of them at the end of 1876. But in these schools, 
as a whole, we do not find the progressive advance 
in numbers which we find in the public schools ; we 
find, on the contrary, a progressive diminution. In 
1854 the private secondary schools in France num- 
bered 1081 ; in 1865 they numbered 935 j in 1876 
their number had fallen to 803. And it is in the 
lay establishments that the diminution has taken 
place; the ecclesiastical establishments are more in 
number than formerly. But whereas the lay estab- 
lishments in 1854 were as many as 825, — more than 
the whole number of private secondary schools at the 
present day, — in 1865 they had fallen to 657, in 
1876 to 494. The ecclesiastical establishments in 
1854 numbered 256; in 1865, 278; in 1876, 309. 
From 1806, when the University of France was 
instituted, down to 1850, private establishments for 
secondary instruction could not exist. All the second- 
ary schools belonged to the University, a State-insti- 
tution, and all the teachers in them were its function- 
aries. The law of March the 15th, 1850, the organic 
law which at present governs public instruction in 
France, was conceived in a spirit of dissatisfaction 
with this exclusive rule of the University, and per- 
mitted the opening, upon certain conditions, of private 
schools. The result has been, as we have seen, 
favourable especially to the growth of ecclesiastical 
establishments, and it disquiets French Liberals ex- 
ceedingly. It deserves investigation and discussion, 
but I must abstain from everything of that kind here. 
The lay private schools had in 1865, eleven years 
after the passing of the new law, 43,009 scholars to 
the 34,897 of their ecclesiastical rivals. The pro- 
portion is now reversed, and the ecclesiastical private 
schools have 46,816 pupils, while the lay private 
schools have but 31,249. 



118 MIXED ESSAYS. [iv. 

The ecclesiastical schools are either under episco- 
pal control, or they belong to one of the teaching 
orders, amongst whom the Jesuits have the chief 
place. Both the episcopal schools and the congreganist 
schools, as they are called, have increased in number, 
but the congreganist schools are by far the more 
numerous and important division. They have nearly 
20,000 pupils. The episcopal schools have 12,300. A 
third class of establishments under ecclesiastical direc- 
tion is formed by schools under the secular Catholic 
clergy or under ministers of other religious denomi- 
nations. Of these schools the non- Catholic form a 
quite insignificant proportion ; they are but 1 3 out 
of 165. But this whole class of schools has decreased 
in number since 1865, while the episcopal and con- 
greganist schools keep increasing. And this, again, 
is a matter of disquietude to French Liberals, who 
consider the influence of the secular clergy as less 
unfavourable to independence of thought than epis- 
copal influence or the influence of the teaching orders. 
And strong discontent is expressed with the law of 
March 1850, which has rendered such a development 
of episcopal and congreganist schools possible. 

For the present, however, let us not be diverted 
by this contest between liberalism and clericalism 
from what is the central point of interest for us, — 
the actual supply in France of a sound secondary 
instruction, apart from all question of the religious 
bias given. In these private establishments for 
instruction of which we have been speaking, no less 
than in the public, guarantees are taken for its 
soundness. A private or free school in France is not 
free in the sense that any man may keep one who 
likes. The head of such a school must be at least 
twenty-five years old, must have had five years' prac- 
tice in school -keeping, and must hold either the 



IV.] ■ POERO UNUM EST NECESSARIUM. 119 

University degree of bachelor, or a certificate which 
is given after an examination of the same nature as 
the examination required for the degree of bachelor. 
His school is, moreover, under government inspection 
as regards its state of commodiousness, healthiness, 
and repair. These are serious guarantees. And, in 
fact, by them and by other causes which co-operate 
with them, the soundness of the secular instruction 
in the dcoles libres is sufficiently secured. The secular 
instruction, having the degree of bachelor or the 
admission to government schools, such as the Poly- 
technic, in view, cannot but follow in general the 
same line as that of the public secondary schools. 
Some of the schools of the religious, such as the 
Jesuits' school at Vaugirard, and the school in the 
Eue des Postes, are in direct competition with the 
Paris lyc^es, and in very successful competition. They 
employ, along with their own teachers, the best lay 
instructors accessible, often the very same whom the 
lyc4es employ. Whatever clerical influence may be 
superadded to it, the secular instruction in the schools 
of the teaching orders, and in the Scoles libres in 
general, does not fall below the ordinary level of this 
instruction in the public schools. 

It is true that, owing to a recent law permitting 
the formation of free Catholic universities and recog- 
nising their degrees, the degree required for those 
who conduct free secondary schools can now be 
obtained from bodies not of public appointment or 
public responsibility. Undoubtedly, new and deno- 
minational universities, in which the professors are 
not of public appointment, ought not to be entrusted 
with power to confer degrees. The law in question 
is said to have been obtained by accident ; an over- 
whelming majority of the Legislative Assembly are 
for its repeal, and after the next elections to the 



120 MIXED ESSAYS. [iv. 

Senate it will certainly, people say, be repealed. But 
whatever the demerits of that law may be, it has not 
been in operation long enough to affect injuriously 
the standard of secular instruction. Secular instruc- 
tion in the private schools remains in general, as I 
have said already, at the same level as in the public 
schools. Before the level can have been lowered by 
the inferior standard for degrees (if it is inferior) of 
the free Catholic universities, those universities will 
have lost the power of granting them. 

But I grudge every word which is here given to 
these questions of religious politics, so attractive to 
the middle-class Englishman, so fatally apt to divert 
his mind from what is the point of cardinal import- 
ance for him, the one thing needful. For him the 
point to be seized and set in clear light, and again 
and again to be insisted upon until seized and set in 
clear light it is, is this : that while we have not more 
than 20,000 boys in Great Britain and Ireland 
receiving a secondary instruction which can in any 
possible sense be said to offer guarantees for its effi- 
ciency, France has 79,231 boys receiving secondary 
instruction in inspected public schools, and 78,065 
more who are receiving it in schools giving public 
guarantees for their efficiency. It is this : that whereas 
in England the middle class is brought up on the 
second plane, in France the middle class is brought 
up on the first plane. 

In 1865 there was published a statement by which 
it appeared that we had in England, counting not 
only the nine great public schools which formed the 
subject of an inquiry by a Eoyal Commission, but 
counting also all the important endowed schools of 
the country, and all the important schools of recent 
foundation, such as Cheltenham and Marlborough, 
— that we had in all these taken together a total 



IV.] POEEO UNUM EST NECESSARIUM. 121 

number of scholars amounting, in round figures, to 
16,000. Let us consider all these schools as being 
sufficiently in the public eye to afford, through that 
very publicity, guarantees for their efficiency. Let us 
add 4000 scholars more. We remember the picture 
which was the other day officially drawn for us of the 
secondary schools of Ireland. In Scotland, deservedly 
celebrated for its elementary schools, the secondary 
schools of high standing and character are few in 
number. But both Ireland and Scotland make con- 
siderable use of the English secondary schools. If 
we add 4000 for increase in England since 1865, and 
for Scotland and Ireland, and put at 20,000 our total 
number of boys under secondary instruction which 
may be called guaranteed, we make a liberal estimate. 
In France they have 157,296. 

The middle class in France has, in consequence, a 
homogeneity, an extent, and an importance, which it 
has nowhere else. " It is our middle class in France," 
says M. Bardoux, " which makes the grandeur ef origin- 
aliU, the greatness and originality, of the nation." 
Above the peasant and artisan, the class who live by 
the labour of their hands and who are the subjects 
for elementary instruction, the rest of the nation con- 
sists, for all intents and purposes, of one immense 
class who are subjects for secondary instruction, and 
who receive it of one equal quality and in schools of 
one equal standing. The professions and that whole 
class which Mr. Charles Sumner distinguishes as the 
class of gentlemen are in England separated from the 
great bulk of the middle class, and are brought up 
along with the aristocracy in a superior order of 
schools. In France the professions and the great 
bulk of the middle class are brought up in schools 
of one equal standing. This creates a middle class 
larger, more homogeneous, and better educated than 



122 MIXED ESSAYS. [iv. 

ours. The French aristocracy are chiefly brought up 
at Vaugirard and at schools under ecclesiastics. I 
have no prejudice against schools under ecclesiastics, 
and Vaugirard is an excellent school. But Vaugirard 
is not a school with better instruction and of higher 
standing than the great public schools used by the 
middle class. It stands to them not as with us Eton 
and Harrow stand to a middle -class academy, but 
rather as Stonyhurst stands to Eton and Harrow. 
The aristocracy in France, therefore, is not a class 
which, in addition to its advantages of birth and 
wealth over the middle class, has received a higher 
training than the middle class, in schools of a superior 
standing. Aristocracy and middle class are brought 
up in schools of one equal standing. The French 
aristocracy has, it is true, the spirit of caste; it 
strives to separate itself, to assert its superiority, to 
give effect to its prepossessions. But the immense 
homogeneous middle class in France is too strong for 
it. The mind and imagination of this class is not 
subjugated by aristocracy like the mind and imagina- 
tion of the middle class in our country. The mere 
comparison of the governments of the two countries 
at the present moment is evidence enough of the 
truth of what I say. In England the government is 
composed of a string of aristocratical personages, with 
one or two men from the professional class who are 
engaged with them, and a man of genius of whom it 
is not easy to say whether he is engaged with them 
or they with him. In France the government is 
composed entirely of men from the professional and 
middle class. True, the difference between the two 
aristocracies in property and standing, since the 
French Ee volution, accounts for much of the differ- 
ence in political influence. But the training of the 
middle class in France counts for more. Its great 



IV.] POREO UNUM EST NECESSARIUIVI. 123 

mass has not, as with us, the sense of an inferior 
training. It is not cut in two, as with us ; it is 
homogeneous. And this immense homogeneous class 
is brought up in schools of as good standing as those 
of the aristocracy ; it is brought up on the first plane. 
It is possible and producible. 

The exhibition has this year drawn English people 
over to Paris in great numbers. They have had the 
astonishing beauty of Paris, and the civilisation and 
prosperity of the French people, brought close before 
their eyes, and they have been struck by it. Prince 
Bismarck says, we know, that the French nation has 
a social solidity such as no other nation of Europe 
enjoys. This can only come from the broad basis 
of well-being, and of cause for satisfaction with life, 
which in France, more than in other European coun- 
tries, exists. We have the testimony of the Belgian 
economist, M. de Laveleye, to the superior well-being 
of the French peasant, and we ought not to be tired 
of repeating it to ourselves over and over again, that 
we may get it well fixed in our minds. " France is 
the country of Europe," says M. de Laveleye, " where 
the soil is more divided than anywhere else except 
in Switzerland and Norway, and it is at the same 
time the country where material well-being is most 
widely spread, where wealth has of late years increased 
most, and where population is least outrunning the 
limits which, for the comfort and progress of the 
working classes themselves, seem necessary." And 
Mr. Hamerton, an acute observer, and an Englishman 
to boot, has remarked on " the enormous interval," 
as he calls it, by which the French peasant is raised 
above the Kentish labourer. Thus much for the 
lower class in France, and for its causes of satisfac- 
tion with life. And if we consider the beauty and 
the ever -advancing perfection of Paris, — nay, and 



124 MIXED ESSAYS. [iv. 

the same holds good, in its degree, of all the other 
great French cities also, — if we consider the theatre 
there ; if we consider the pleasures, recreations, even 
the eating and drinking; if we consider the whole range 
of resources for instruction, and for delight, and for 
the conveniences of a humane life generally ; and if we 
then think of London, and Liverpool, and Glasgow, 
and of the life of English towns generally, we shall find 
that the advantage of France arises from its immense 
middle class making the same sort of demands upon 
life which only a small upper class makes elsewhere. 

Delicate and gifted single natures are sown in all 
countries. The French aristocracy will not bear a 
moment's comparison for splendour and importance 
with ours, neither have the French our exceptional 
class, registered by Mr. Charles Sumner, of gentle- 
men. But these are, after all, only two relatively 
small divisions broken off from the top of that whole 
great class which does not live by the labour of its 
hands. These small divisions make upon life the 
demands of humane and civilised men. But they 
are too small and too weak to create a civilisation 
to make a Paris. The great bulk of the class from 
which they are broken off makes, as is well known 
no such demands upon life. London, Liverpool, and 
-Glasgow, with their kind of building, physiognomy, 
and effects j with their theatres, pleasures, recreations, 
and resources in general of delight and convenience 
for a humane life, are the result. But in France 
the whole middle class makes, I say, upon life the 
demands of civilised men, and this immense demand 
creates the civilisation we see. And the joy of this 
civilisation creates the passionate delight and pride 
in France which we find in Frenchmen. Life is so 
good and agreeable a thing there, and for so many. 

French society has, in my opinion, whatever 



IV.] POERO UNUM EST NECESSAEIUM. 125 

Prince Bismarck may say, sources of great danger 
'as well as of great strength. English society has its 
sources of great strength as well as its sources of 
danger. But I am calling attention now to one 
single point in the social condition of the two 
nations, — to the demand which the middle class, in 
each of them, makes upon life, and to the results 
which flow from it. It is surely impossible to deny 
that the whole immense middle class in France 
makes upon life the demands which are elsewhere 
those of a limited upper class only, and that French 
civilisation gains enormously in both volume and 
quality by this being so. It is not difficult, of 
course, in England, for one of the aristocratic class, 
or for one of the class of gentlemen, to see that our 
middle class rests satisfied with a defective type of 
religion, a narrow range of intellect and knowledge, 
a stunted sense of beauty, a low standard of manners. 
But an ordinary Frenchman of the middle class sees 
it just as clearly as any great lord or refined gentle- 
man sees it with us, because his standard of civilisa- 
tion is so comparatively high. It is not the French 
aristocracy and professions, it is the whole French 
middle class, which is astonished at the pleasures of 
the gay and pleasure-seeking portion of our middle 
class. It is not the French aristocracy and profes- 
sions, it is the whole French middle class, which is 
astonished at the hideousness and immense ennui of 
the life of the graver portion. " The sense of acute 
ennui which the aspect and frequentation of this 
great division of English society produce in others, 
the want of elasticity and the chronic ennui which 
characterise this class itself " — that is not an expres- 
sion of the feeling merely of a fastidious upper class 
or of a superfine individual, it is the genuine senti- 
ment of the mass of middle-class France. 



126 MIXED ESSAYS. [iv. 

The French middle class is called Voltairian, as 
the French University and its schools, in which the 
middle class is educated, are called Voltairian too. 
Voltairian the French middle class in the main is. 
A great deal may be said in dispraise of Voltaire. 
But this is his centenary year ; it is a hundred years 
ago this year since he died. II avait heaucoup travailU 
dans ce monde, as Michelet says of our own Henry 
the Fifth : — " he had done a big spell of work in this 
world ;" and of the indefatigable worker let us on 
this occasion speak good rather than evil. He looked 
at things straight, and he had a marvellous logic and 
lucidity. The Morning Star, I remember, which has 
passed away from amongst us, used to say that what 
characterises Englishmen, and above all. Englishmen 
of the middle class, is " clear, manly intelligence, 
which penetrates through sophisms, ignores common- 
places, and gives to conventional illusions their true 
value." And the French, in like manner, the French 
middle class above all, pique themselves on their 
logic and lucidity. The French mind craves it, the 
French language almost compels it; Voltaire, the 
French Luther of the eighteenth century, was a 
splendid professor and propagator of it. And to a 
middle -class Frenchman it seems a matter of the 
plainest reasoning in the world, that the civilisation 
of the middle class must suffer in England and thrive 
in France. '' Equality," he thinks with M. Gambetta, 
"is in France the source of all our strength in the 
present, of all our good hope for the future. England 
has, in Mr. Gladstone's famous words, the religion 
of inequality. " With your enormous inequality of 
conditions and property," our Frenchman would say, 
" a middle class is naturally thrown back upon itself 
and upon an inferior type of social life and of civilisa- 
tion. Add to this your want of public schools for 



IV.] POKEO UNUM EST NECESSARIUM. 127 

this class, and that it is brought up anyhow, brought 
up in hugger-mugger, brought up on the second plane ; 
— its being thrown back upon an inferior type of 
social life and of civilisation is an irresistible necessity. 
In France we have got equality, and we bring up 
our middle class on the first plane; hence French 
civilisation." And the Morning Star, which should 
have answered this man of logic and lucidity, and 
should have shown why it is the part of the clear, 
manly intelligence of Englishmen which penetrates 
through sophisms, ignores commonplaces, and gives 
to conventional illusions their true value, rather to 
insist on introducing readings from Eliza Cook into 
our public churchyards, or on legalising marriage 
with a deceased wife's sister, than to abate our 
enormous inequality of conditions and property, or 
to provide schools for bringing up our middle class 
on the first plane instead of the second, — the Mm-n- 
ing Star, I say, is unhappily defunct. 

And if, in the regretted absence of that powerful 
disputant, our man of logic and lucidity were to be 
told by some ingenuous person that after all we were 
not all of us in England satisfied with the state of 
our secondary instruction, although our aristocratic 
class and our middle class itself apparently were, 
but that there was a project on foot for bettering it, 
and if our Frenchmen were then to ask what it was, 
— what should we say^ We should say that a 
generous and humane soul, a lover of light and 
perfection, detached from the prepossessions both of 
the aristocratic and of the middle class, and not 
willing that our middle class should continue to be 
the worst schooled in civilised Europe, had adopted 
a bill which he found waiting for some one to take 
charge of it and to put it forward, and which he 
hoped might improve matters if it could become 



128 MIXED ESSAYS. [iv. 

law ; that his name was Playfair, and that he was 
member for the University of Edinburgh. And Dr. 
Playfair's bill proposes, we should say, to form a 
Council of Public Instruction such as exists in 
France, and to give power to this council to send 
its inspectors into endowed schools, and to offer to 
send its inspectors into schools which are not en- 
dowed, if the schools like to receive them. For not 
even a generous and humane soul, we should have 
to say, such as Dr. Playfair, thinks it possible to 
attempt in England, for the rescue of the middle 
class from its state of inferior schooling, more than 
this. And our man of logic and lucidity would 
certainly reply, that this was like attempting to cure 
our enormous inequality of conditions and property 
by the Eeal Estates Intestacy Bill; that the real 
objective for us, as the military phrase is, was the 
bringing up of the middle class on the first plane, 
not the second, and that this is not to be done by 
inspecting a certain number of schools whether they 
wiU or no, and offering to inspect others if they hke 
it, but by creating a system of public secondary 
schools. 

And certainly, as a matter of fact, a plan of annual 
examination of secondary schools by inspectors, such 
as that which we have in elementary schools, does 
not seem likely in itself to work well and smoothly, 
while at the same time it fails, as the Frenchman 
says, to bring us to what is our real objective. The 
examination of secondary schools by inspectors is a 
matter of far greater difficulty and delicacy than the 
examination of elementary schools, is far more likely 
to produce impatience and opposition among the 
schoolmasters subjected to it, and is really far less 
necessary. All our good secondary schools have at 
present some examination proceeding from the uni- 



IV.] PORRO UNUM EST NECESSARIUM. 129 

versities ; and if this kind of examination, customary 
and admitted already, were generalised and regular- 
ised, it would be sufficient for the purpose. What is 
really needed is to follow the precedent of the Ele- 
mentary Education Act, by requiring the provision 
throughout the country of a proper supply of secondary 
schools, with proper buildings and accommodations, 
at a proper fee, and with proper guarantees given by 
the teachers in the shape either of a university degree 
or of a special certificate for secondary instruction. 
An inquiry, as under that Act, would have to be 
made as to the fulfilment of the necessary conditions 
by the actual schools now professing to meet the 
demand for secondary instruction, and as to the 
correspondence of the supply of schools fulfilling 
those conditions with the supply fixed after due 
calculation as requisite. The existing resources for 
secondary instruction, if judiciously co-ordered and 
utilised, would prove to be immense ; but undoubtedly 
gaps would have to be filled, an annual State grant 
and municipal grants would be necessary. That is 
to say, the nation would perform, as a corporate and 
co-operative work, a work which is now never con- 
ceived and laid out as a whole, but is done sporadi- 
cally, precariously, and insufficiently. We have had 
experience how elementary instruction gains by being 
thus conceived and laid out, instead of being left to 
individual adventure or individual benevolence. The 
middle class who contribute so immense a share of 
the cost incurred for the public institution of ele- 
mentary schools, while their own school supply is so 
miserable, would be repaid twenty times over for 
their share in the additional cost of publicly insti- 
tuting secondary instruction by the direct benefit 
which they and theirs would get from its system of 
schools. The upper class, which has bought out the 

VOL. IV. K 



130 ^nXED ESSAYS. [iv. 

middle class at so many of the great foundation 
schools designed for its benefit, and which has mono- 
polised what good secondary instruction we have, 
owes to the middle class the reparation of contributing 
to a public system of secondary schools. Perhaps 
secojulary is a bad word to use, because it is equivocal. 
Intermediate is a better. A system of public inter- 
mediate schools we require to have throughout the 
countr}^, of two grades, the classical side predomi- 
nating in the schools of one grade, the modern side 
in the other ; where for a fee of from £30 to £50 a 
year for boarders, and from £10 to £20 a year for 
day boys, the middle class might obtain education. 
All existing schools which give, under proper guaran- 
tees, secondary instruction, should be classed as pubHc 
intermediate schools. Nor should theu' scale of fees 
be interfered with. But it should be calculated for 
what proportion of the class requiring secondary 
instruction schools with such fees can be considered 
to make provision. For the proportion remaining, — 
for the great bulk, that is, of the middle class,^ — pro- 
vision ought to be found or made at the lower rates. 
The intervention and inspection of government 
should be limited to the following points mainly: — 
First, to inquiring and announcing what is the pro- 
vision requisite, to taking care that within a certain 
time it is suppKed, and that when supplied it is 
maintained. Secondly, to ascertaining that the 
teaching staff is provided with the degrees or certifi- 
cates prescribed as a public guarantee of efficiency, 
that some examination of the schools by other 
teachers than their own, an examination proceeding 
either from the universities or from some recognised 
scholastic authority, takes place in them every year, 
and that the school premises are sufficient, suitably 
fitted and kept, and wholesome. Inspection of this 



IV.] PORRO UNUM EST NECESSAEIUM. 131 

kind is the function of a ministerial department 
rather than of a council, and it is not of a nature to 
irritate schoolmasters' susceptibilities. 

The function of a council is consultative : to con- 
sider and advise as to methods and studies. The 
function is a very important one. But a Council of 
Public Instruction is generally a body framed so as to 
represent several great interests. It is so in France, 
at any rate. And the consequence is, I believe, that 
instead of there being much consideration of school 
methods and studies, the interests generally break 
out and begin a war, religious, professional, or ad- 
ministrative, amongst themselves ; and the minister 
finds it expedient to convoke and consult his council 
as little as possible. 

It is not always quite easy to follow our French 
friends, men of logic and lucidity though they may 
be, when they are singing the glories of the ideas of 
1789. But the French system of public secondary 
instruction is one of the real, one of the best con- 
quests of 1789 and of the Ee volution. Decreed and 
begun by the Convention, organised by Fourcroy's 
law in 1802, secured by the estabhshment of the 
University in 1806, this system provides effective 
schooling, and on one common plane, for the whole 
class requiring an instruction more than elementary ; 
while with the elementary schools it connects itself 
in an unbroken order, offering a second stage by 
which the new social strata, as M. Gambetta calls 
them, may move onward, if they are worthy, and 
may rise. And our want of any such system in 
England is like the want of any municipal system for 
our country parishes, where the mode of government 
by vestry answers to that in use formerly in the 
rural districts of France, and described by Turgot : a 
kind of mass-meeting of the parishioners held by the 



132 MIXED ESSAYS. [iv. 

cur6 in the churchyard after service. Both wants are 
due to what Thiers was never weary of pointing out 
as matter for remark and reflection : the purely 
political character of our revolutions ; the absence 
from them, — the unavoidable and irreproachable 
absence it may be, but still the absence, — of all aim 
at social renovation. 

Schools for the licensed victuallers, schools for the 
commercial travellers, schools for the Wesleyans, 
schools for the Quakers, — to educate a middle class 
in this way is to doom it to grow up on an inferior 
plane, with the claims of intellect and knowledge not 
satisfied, the claim of beauty not satisfied, the claim 
of manners not satisfied. At a very great money- 
price the upper class has got possession of what 
public secondary schools of good standing there are, 
and does not feel bound to lend its endeavours to- 
wards stripping itself of the advantage which this 
higher training gives to it. That an upper class 
should not care to be disturbed in its preponderance 
is perhaps natural; that a middle class should ac- 
quiesce in a state of things which dooms it to in- 
feriority does at first sight seem astonishing. Yet 
we ought not to be too much astonished at it, for 
human nature resists instinctively any change in its 
habits. And an English middle class brought up in 
public schools and on the first plane, an English 
middle class homogeneous, intelligent, civilised, would 
undergo more than some slight and partial change of 
habits. It would undergo transformation. A trans- 
formation devoutly to be wished, indeed, yet so vast 
a one that the wise man may be inclined to shrink 
from the toil of trying single-handed to bring it to 
pass, — may content himself with not being made a 
dupe of, not being taken in, when he is told that it is 
undesirable and impossible. And yet if all those 



IV.] POERO UNUM EST NECESSARIUM. 133 

generous and humane souls, free from tlie preposses- 
sions of class, who are scattered about in every 
society, were to turn their thoughts this way, and to 
see what is the truth, that perhaps our chief and 
gravest want in this country at present, our imum 
necessarium, is a middle elass, homogeneous, intelligent, 
civilised, brought up in good public schools and on 
the first plane, something surely might be done ! 

Mr. Lowe says that " an English government 
should be guided simply by the consideration how to 
produce for the country the greatest amount of happi- 
ness of which the condition of its existence admits. " 
Mr. Gladstone says that " with the true Liberal states- 
man, England's first care is held to be the care of her 
own children within her own shores, the redress of 
wrongs, the supply of needs, the improvement of 
laws and institutions." If there is one thing more 
certain than another, it is this : that the middle class 
is in France happier than with us. If there is one 
need more crying than another, it is the need of the 
English middle class to be rescued from a defective 
type of religion, a narrow range of intellect and 
knowledge, a stunted sense of beauty, a low standard 
of manners. And what could do so much to deliver 
them and to render them happier, as to give them 
proper education, public education, to bring them up 
on the first plane ; to make them a class homogeneous, 
intelligent, civilised "? Nay, and our upper class itself, 
though it may be supposed to be not naturally in- 
clined to lend a hand to deprive itself of preponder- 
ance, has far too much public spirit not to be con- 
cerned and disquieted if it really comes to see that 
our civilisation is maimed by our middle class being 
left as it is, and that the whole country, the whole 
English nation, suffers by it. Where is there in the 
world an upper class which has in it so many who 



■J 34 MIXED ESSAYS. &''• 

know well that it will not do for a man ™ply to 
S of himself,-to aggrandise himse f ; hat a m^ 
must be w commune ionus, good ^^t^a goodness 
Te^ ceable to the common cause? And this is ju t 
Sis required of^very worthier soul amougst our 
Itoer classes; thf in the matter of middle class 
Xation he 'should be m coramune bonus, good with 
a goodness serviceable to the common cause :— 
■ " Nee sibi,"sed toti genitum se credere mimdo . . . 
Justitiie caltor, rigidi servator honesti, 
In commune bonus." 



Y.] A GUIDE TO ENGLISH UTEEATUEE. 141 

be made out is tliat English came into greater use 
because even foreigners had for certain purposes to 
adopt it. Mr. Stopford Brooke wishes to inform by 
the way his young reader, that the foreigners in 
doing so used many French words. But the manner 
in which he throws this in must cause puzzle ; for 
the young reader imagines it to lead up somehow to 
the main point that English came into more general 
use, and it does not. Or the want of clearness arises 
from something being put forward, about which Mr. 
Stopford Brooke, after he has put it forward, feels 
hesitation. "The poem marks the close of the 
religious influence of the friars. They had been 
attacked before in a poem of 1320; but in this poem 
there is not a word said against them. It is true, 
the author living far in the country may not have 
been thrown much with them." Mr. Stopford 
Brooke means here, so far as I understand him, to 
imply that there not being a word said against the 
friars in the poem in question marks the close of 
their religious influence. That is rather a subtle 
inference for a young reader to follow. Mr. Stopford 
Brooke, however, seems to feel (for I am really not 
quite sure that I understand him) that he may have 
been too subtle ; and he adds : " It is true, the 
author living far in the country may not have been 
thrown much with them." That is to say: "If you 
consider the thing more subtly, perhaps you had 
better not make the inference I have suggested." 
A subtlety requiring immediately to be relieved by 
another subtlety, is rather too much for a young 
reader. The writer of a primer should attempt to 
convey nothing but what can be conveyed in a quite 
plain and straightforward fashion. 

But presently we come to Layamon's Brut, and 
here we see how admirably Mr. Stopford Brooke 



142 MIXED ESSAYS. [y. 

understands his business. It is not difficult to be 
dull in speaking of Layamon's Brut^ or even in 
quoting from it. But what Mr. Stopford Brooke 
says of Layamon and his work is just what every 
one will feel interested in hearing of them; and 
what he quotes is exactly what will complete and 
enhance this feeling of interest : — 

" ' There was a priest in tlie land,' Layamon writes of him- 
self, ' whose name was Layamon ; he was son of Leovenath ; 
may the Lord be gracious unto him ! He dwelt at Earnley, a 
noble church on the bank of Severn, near Kadstone, where he 
read books. It came in mind to him and in his chiefest 
thought that he would tell the noble deeds of England, what 
the men were named, and whence they came, who first had 
English land.' " 

Freshness of touch, a treatment always the very 
opposite of the pedant's treatment of things, make 
the great charm of Mr. Stopford Brooke's work. He 
owes them, no doubt, to his genuine love for nature 
and poetry : — 

"In 1300 we meet with a few lyric poems, full of charm. 
They sing of spring-time with its blossoms, of the woods ringing 
with the thrush and nightingale, of the flowers and the seemly 
sun, of country work, of the woes and joy of love, and many 
other delightful things." 

No such secret of freshness as delight in all these 
" delightful things " and in the poetry which tells of 
them! 

This second chapter, giving the history of English 
literature from the Conquest to Chaucer, is admirably 
proportioned. The personages come in due order, 
the humblest not without his due word of introduc- 
tion ; the chief figures pause awhile and stand clear 
before us, each in his due degree of prominence. To 
do justice to the charm of Mr. Stopford Brooke's 



v.] A GUIDE TO ENGLISH LITERATURE. 143 

primer, let the reader turn to the pages on Chaucer. 
Something I must quote from them ; I wish I could 
quote all ! 

" Chaucer's first and great delight was in human nature, 
and he makes us love the noble characters in his poems, and 
feel with kindliness towards the baser and ruder sort. He 
never sneers, for he had a wide charity, and we can always 
smUe in his pages at the follies and forgive the sins of men. 
He had a true and chivalrous regard for women, and his wife 
and he must have been very happy if they fulfilled the ideal he 
had of marriage. He lived in aristocratic society, and yet he 
thought him the greatest gentleman who was ' most vertuous 
alway, Prive and pert (open), and most entendeth aye To do 
the gentil dedes that he can. ' He lived frankly among men, 
and, as we have seen, saw many different types of men, and in 
his own time filled many parts as a man of the world and of 
business. Yet with all this active and observant life, he was 
commonly very quiet and kept much to himself. The Host in 
the Tales japes at him for his lonely abstracted air. ' Thou 
lookest as thou wouldest find a hare, And ever on the ground I 
see thee stare.' Being a good scholar, he read morning and 
night alone, and he says that after his ofl&ce-work he would go 
home and sit at another book as dumb as a stone, till his look 
was dazed. While at study and when he was making of songs 
and ditties, 'nothing else that God had made' had any interest for 
him. There was but one thing that roused him then, and that 
too he liked to enjoy alone. It was the beauty of the morning 
and the fields, the woods, the streams, the flowers, and the 
singing of the little birds. This made his heart full of revel 
and solace, and when spring came after winter, he rose with 
the lark and cried, ' Farewell my book and my devotion.' He 
was the first who made the love of nature a distinct element in 
our poetry. He was the first who, in spending the whole day 
gazing alone on the daisy, set going that lonely delight in natural 
scenery which is so special a mark of our later poets. He lived 
thus a doirble life, in and out of the world, but never a gloomy 
one. For he was fond of mirth and good-living, and when he 
grew towards age was portly of waist, ' no poppet to embrace.' 
But he kept to the end his elfish countenance, the shy, delicate, 



144 MIXED ESSAYS. [v. 

lialf-miscliievoiis face which looked on men from its gray hair 
and forked beard, and was set off by his light gray-coloured 
dress and hood. A knife and inkhorn hung on his dress, we 
see a rosary in his hand, and when he was alone he walked 
swiftly." 

I could not bring myself to make the quotation 
shorter, although Mr. Stopford Brooke may ask me, 
indeed, why I do not observe in a review the pro- 
portion which I demand in a primer. 

The third and fourth chapters bring us to the 
Eenascence and the Elizabethan age. Spenser is 
touched by Mr. Stopford Brooke almost as charm- 
ingly as Chaucer. The pages on Shakspeare are 
full of interest, and the great poet gains by the mode 
in which we are led up to him. Mr. Stopford 
Brooke has remembered that Shakspeare is, as 
Goethe said, not truly seen when he is regarded as a 
great single mountain rising straight out of the plain ; 
he is truly seen when seen among the hills of his 
BiesenSeimath, his giant home, — among them, though 
towering high above them. Only one or two sentences 
I could wish otherwise. Mr. Stopford Brooke says 
of Shakspeare's last plays : — 

"All these belong to and praise forgiveness, and it seems, if 
we may conjecture, that looking back on all the wrong he had 
suffered and on all that he had done, Shakspeare could say in 
the forgiveness he gave to men and in the forgiveness he sought 
of heaven the words he had written in earlier days : The quality 
of mercy is not strained. " 

Perhaps that might not .be out of place in a volume 
of lectures on Shakspeare. But it is certainly 
somewhat far-fetched and fanciful ; too fanciful for 
our primer. Nor is it quite sound and sober criti- 
cism, again, to say of Shakspeare : "He was alto- 
gether, from end to end, an artist, and the greatest 



v.] A GUIDE TO ENGLISH LITEEATUEE. 145 

artist tlie modern world has known." Or again : 
"In the unchangeableness of pure art-power Shak- 
speare stands entirely alone." There is a peculiarity 
in Mr. Stopford Brooke's use of the words art, artist 
He means by an artist one whose aim in writing is 
not to reveal himself, but to give pleasure ; he says 
most truly that Shakspeare's aim was to please, that 
Shakspeare " made men and women whose dramatic 
action on each other and towards a catastrophe was 
intended to please the public, not to reveal himself." 
This is indeed the true temper of the artist. But 
when we call a man emphatically artist, a great artist, 
we mean something more than this temper in which 
he works ; we mean by art, not merely an aim to 
please, but also, and more, a law of pure and flawless 
workmanship. As living always under the sway of 
this law, and as, therefore, a perfect artist, we do not 
conceive of Shakspeare. His workmanship is often 
far from being pure and flawless. 

* • Till that Bellona's bridegroom, lapp'd in proof 
Confronted Mm witli self-comparisons — " 

There is but one name for such writing as that, if 
Shakspeare had signed it a thousand times, — it is 
detestable. And it is too frequent in Shakspeare. 
In a book, therefore, where every sentence should be 
sure, simple, and solid, not requiring mental reserva- 
tions nor raising questions, we ought not to speak of 
Shakspeare as " altogether, from end to end, an 
artist ;" as " standing entirely alone in the unchange- 
ableness of pure art-power." He is the richest, the 
most wonderful, the most powerful, the most de- 
lightful of poets j he is not altogether, nor even 
eminently, an artist. 

In the fifth chapter we reach Milton. Mr. Stop- 
ford Brooke characterises Milton's poems well, when 

VOL. IV. ^""' L 



146 MIXED ESSAYS. [y. 

he speaks of "their majestic movement, their grand 
style, and their grave poetry." But I wonder at his 
designating Milton our greatest poet. Nor does the 
criticism of Paradise Lost quite satisfy me. I do not 
think that "as we read the great epic, we feel that 
the lightness and grace of Milton's youthful time are 
gone." True, the poet of Paradise Lost differs from 
the poet of L^ Allegro and II Penseroso ; but the feel- 
ing raised by Paradise Lost is not a feeling that light- 
ness and grace are gone. That would be a negative 
feeling, a feeling of disappointment ; and the feeling 
raised by Paradise Lost is far other. Yet neither is 
it a feeling which justifies Mr. Stopford Brooke in 
saying that " at last all thought and emotion centre 
round Adam and Eve, until the closing lines leave us 
with their lonely image in our minds." The person- 
ages have no growing, absorbing interest of this kind ; 
when, we finish the poem, it is not with our minds 
agitated by them and full of them. The power of 
Paradise Lost is to be sought elsewhere. Nor is it 
true to say that Milton " summed up in himself all 
the higher influences of the Renascence." The dis- 
interested curiosity, the humanism of the Renascence, 
are not characteristics of Milton, — of Milton, that is 
to say, when he is fully formed and has taken his 
ply. Nor again can it rightly be said that Milton 
"began that pure poetry of natural description which 
has no higher examples to show in Wordsworth, or 
Scott, or Keats, than his L' Allegro and // Penseroso.'^ 
L' Allegro and // Penseroso are charming, but they are 
not pure poetry of natural description in the sense in 
which the Highland Rea;per is, or the Ode tc Autumn. 
The poems do not touch the same chords or belong 
to the same order. Scott is altogether out of place 
in the comparison. His natural description in verse 
has the merits of his natural description in prose, 



v.] A GUIDE TO ENGLISH LITERATURE. 147 

which are very considerable. But it never has the 
grace and felicity of Milton, or the natural magic of 
Wordsworth and Keats. As poetical work, it is not 
to be even named with theirs. 

Shakspeare and Milton are such prominent objects 
in a primer of English literature that one dwells on 
them, strives to have them presented quite aright. 
After Milton we come to a century whose literature 
has no figures of this grandeur. The literary import- 
ance of the eighteenth century lies mainly in its 
having wrought out a revolution begun in the seven- 
teenth, — no less a revolution than the establishment 
of what Mr. Stopford Brooke well calls " the second 
period of English prose, in which the style is easy, 
unaffected, moulded to the subject, and the proper 
words are put in their proper places." With his 
strong love of poetry, Mr. Stopford Brooke could not, 
perhaps, feel the same sympathy and delight in deal- 
ing with this prose century as in dealing with the 
times of Chaucer or Elizabeth. Still his account of 
its writers does not fail in interest, and is in general 
just. But his arrangement is here not quite satis- 
factory. The periods of time covered by his chapters 
should be literary periods, not merely periods in 
political history. His sixth chapter has for its title : 
From the Restoration to George III. The period from 
the Restoration to George the Third is a period in 
political history only. George the Third has nothing 
to do with literature ; his accession marks no epoch 
in our civilisation or in our literature, such as is 
marked by the Conquest or by the reign of Elizabeth. 
I wish that Mr. Stopford Brooke would change the 
title of this chapter, and make it : From the Bestoration 
to the Death of Fope and Swift. Pope died in 1744, 
Swift in 1745. The following chapter should be: 
From 1745 to the French Fievolution. The next and 



148 MIXED ESSAYS. [v. 

last : From the French Revolution to the Death of 
Scott 

These are real periods in our literature. Mr. 
Stopford Brooke enumerates, at the beginning of his 
seventh chapter, causes which from the earl}'' part of 
the eighteenth century were at work to influence 
literature. 

*' The long peace after tlie accession of the House of Hanover 
had left England at rest and given it wealth. The reclaiming 
of waste tracts, the [increased wealth and trade, made better 
communication necessary ; and the country was soon covered 
with a network of highways. The leisure gave time to men to 
think and write ; the quicker interchange between the capital 
and the country spread over England the literature of the capital, 
and stirred men everywhere to write. The coaching services 
and the post carried the new book and the literary criticism to 
the villages. Communication with the Continent had increased 
during the peaceable times of Walpole." 

By the middle of the century, by a time well marked 
by the death of Pope and Swift, these influences had 
been in operation long enough to form a second 
period in the eighteenth century, sufficiently distin- 
guishable from the period of Addison and Pope, and 
lasting down to a period of far more decisive change, 
the period of the French Eevolution. 

Prose and poetry, within these periods, should not 
have each their separate chapter ; it is unnecessary, 
and leads to some confusion. Sir Walter Scott is at 
present noticed in one of Mr. Stopford Brooke's 
chapters as a poet, in another as a prose writer. And 
the limits of each period should be observed ; authors 
and works should not be mentioned out of their order 
of date. At present Mr. Stopford Brooke mentions 
the Rivals and School for Scandal of Sheridan in his 
sixth chapter, a chapter which professes to go from 
the Eestoration to the accession of George the Third. 



v.] A GUIDE TO ENGLISH LITERATUEE. 149 

At the very beginning of the following chapter, which 
goes from 1760 to 1837, he introduces his mention of 
the Morning Chronicle, the Post, the Herald, and the 
Times, of the Edinburgh and the Quarterly Revieiv, and 
of Blackwood's Magazine. By being freed from all 
such defects in lucid and orderly arrangement, the 
primer would gain in clearness. 

It would gain in brevity and proportion by ending 
with the death of Scott in 1832. I wish I might 
prevail upon Mr. Stopford Brooke to bring his primer 
to an end with Scott's death in that year. I wish he 
would leave out every word about his contemporaries, 
and about publications which have appeared since 
1832. The death of Sir Walter Scott is a real epoch ; 
it marks the end of one period and the beginning of 
another,— of the period in which we are ourselves 
now living. No man can trust himself to speak of 
his own time and his own contemporaries with the 
same sureness of judgment and the same proportion 
as of times and men gone by ; and in a primer of 
literature we should avoid, so far as we can, all hin- 
drances to sureness of judgment and to proportion. 
The readers of the primer, also, are not likely to hear 
too little of contemporary literature, if its praises are 
unrehearsed in their primer ; they are certain, under 
all circumstances, to hear quite enough of it, probably 
too much. 

" Charlotte Bronte revived in Jane Eyre the novel of Passion, 
and Miss Yonge set on foot the religious novel in support of a 
special school of theology. Miss Martineau and Mr. Disraeli 
carried on the novel of political opinion and economy, and 
Charles Kingsley applied the novel to the social and theological 
problems of our own day." 

Let Mr. Stopford Brooke make a clean sweep of all 
this, I entreat him. And if his date of 1832 com- 



150 MIXED ESSAYS. [v. 

pels him to include Rogers and his poetry, let him 
give to them, not a third part of a page, but one 
line. I reckon that these reductions would shorten 
the last part of the primer by five pages. A little 
condensation in the judgments on Wordsworth, Byron, 
and Shelley would abridge it by another page ; the 
omission of the first pages of the volume by two 
more. Our primer shortened by eight pages ! no 
small gain in a work of this character. 

The last three chapters of the book, therefore, I 
could wish recast, and one or two phrases in his 
criticism Mr. Stopford Brooke might perhaps revise 
at the same time. He says most truly of Addison 
that his Spectator " gave a better tone to manners and 
a gentler one to political and literary criticism." He 
says truly, too, of Addison's best papers : " No humour 
is more fine and tender; and, like Chaucer's, it is 
never bitter." He has a right to the conclusion, 
therefore, that "Addison's work was a great one, 
lightly done." But to say of Addison's style, that 
" in its varied cadence and subtle ease it has never 
been surpassed," seems to me to be going a little too 
far. One could not say more of Plato's. Whatever 
his services to his time, Addison is for us now a writer 
whose range and force of thought are not considerable 
enough to make him interesting ; and his stjde cannot 
equal in varied cadence and subtle ease the style of 
a man like Plato, because without range and force of 
thought all the resources of style, whether in cadence 
or in subtlety, are not and cannot be brought out. 

Is it an entirely accurate judgment, again, on the 
poems of Gray and Collins, to call them " exquisite 
examples of perfectly English work wrought in the 
spirit of classic art ? " I confess, this language seems 
to me to be too strong. Much as I admire Gray, one 
feels, I think, in reading his poetry, never quite 



v.] A GUIDE TO ENGLISH LITERATUEE. 151 

secure against the false poetical style of the eighteenth 
century. It is always near at hand, sometimes it 
breaks in ; and the sense of this prevents the security 
one enjoys with truly classic work, the fulness of 
pleasure, the cordial satisfaction. 

*' Thy joys no glittering female meets " — 
or even things in the Megy : 

' ' He gave to misery all lie had — a tear ; 
He gained from Heaven ('twas all he wish'd) a friend" — 

are instances of the sort of drawback I mean. And 
the false style, which here comes to the surface, we 
are never very far from in Gray. Therefore, to call 
his poems " exquisite examples of perfectly English 
work wrought in the spirit of classic art " seems to 
me an exaggeration. 

Mr. Stopford Brooke's Cowper is excellent, but 
again there seems to me to be some want of sobriety 
in the praise given. Philanthropy, no doubt, 
animated Cowper's heart and shows itself in his 
poetry. But it is too much to say of the apparition 
of Cowper and of his philanthropy in English 
poetry: "It is a wonderful change, a change so 
wonderful that it is like a new world. It is, in fact, 
the concentration into our retired poet's work of all 
the new thought upon the subject of mankind which 
was soon to take so fierce a form in Paris." Cowper, 
with his morbid religion and lumbering movement, 
was no precursor, as Mr. Stopford Brooke would 
thus make him, of Byron and Shelley. His true 
praise is, that by his simple affections and genuine 
love of nature he was a precursor of Wordsworth. 

Of Wordsworth's philosophy of Nature Mr. Stop- 
ford Brooke draws out, I think, a more elaborate 
account than we require in a primer. No one will 



152 MIXED ESSAYS. [v. 

be much helped by Wordsworth's philosophy of 
Nature, as a scheme in itself and disjoined from his 
poems. Nor shall we be led to enjoy the poems the 
more by having a philosophy of Nature abstracted 
from them and presented to us in its nakedness. Of 
the page and a quarter which Mr. Stopford Brooke 
has given to Wordsworth's philosophy of Nature, all 
might with advantage, perhaps, be dropped but 
this : — 

" Nature was a person to "Wordsworth, distinct from himself, 
and capable of being loved. He could brood on her character, 
her ways, her words, her life. Hence arose his minute and 
loving observation of her, and his passionate description of all 
her forms." 

There might be some condensation, too, in the 
criticism of Byron as the poet of Don Juan and as 
the poet of Nature. But some touches in the criti- 
cism of Byron are admirable. "We feel naturally 
great interest in this strong personaUty, put before 
us with such obstinate power ; but it wearies at last. 
Finally it weaned himself.^'' Or again : " It is his 
colossal power and the ease which comes from it, in 
which he resembles Dry den, that marks him specially." 
Nothing could be better. 

On Shelley, also, Mr. Stopford Brooke has an ex- 
cellent sentence. He says of his lyrics : " They 
form together the most sensitive, the most imagina- 
tive, and the most musical, but the least tangible 
lyrical poetry we possess." But in the pages on 
Shelley, yet more than in -those on Byron, condensa- 
tion is desirable. Shelley is a most interesting and 
attractive personage ; but in a work of the dimensions 
of this primer, neither his Queen Mob, nor his Alastor. 
nor his Revolt of Islam, nor his Prometheus Unbound, 
deserve the space which Mr. Stopford Brooke gives 



v.] A GUIDE TO ENGLISH LITEEATUEE. 153 

to them. And finally, as the sentence which I have 
last quoted is just a sentence of the right stamp for 
a primer, so a passage such as the following is just 
of the sort which is unsuitable : — 

"SheUey wants the closeness of grasp of nature which 
\Vo£ds-v^or±lL. and Keats had, but he had the power in a far 
greater degree than they of describing a vast landscape melting 
into indefinite distance. In this he stands fiorst among English 
poets, and is in poetry what Turner was in landscape painting. 
Along with this special quality of vastness his colour is as true 
as Scott'Sj. butjtruer in this that it is full of half tones, while 
Scott's is laid out in broad yeUow, crimson, and blue, in black 
and white. " 

Very clever, but also very fantastic; and at all 
events quite out of place in a primer ! 

Mr. Stopford Brooke will forgive me for my plain- 
speaking. It comes from my hearty esteem and 
admiration for his primer, and my desire to clear it 
of every speck and flaw, so that it may win its way 
into every one's hands. I hope he will revise it, and 
then I shall read it again with a fresh pleasure. 
But indeed, whether he revises it or no, I shall read 
it again : 8ls rj rpls ra KaXd. 



VI. 

FALKLAND. 

" The English are just, but not amiable." A well- 
bred Frenchman, who has recently travelled in India, 
and who published in the Revue des Deux Monies an 
interesting account of what he saw and heard there, 
ends with this criticism. The criticism conveys, he 
says, as to the English and their rule, the real mind 
of the best informed and most intelligent of the 
natives of India with whom he conversed. They 
admitted the great superiority of the English rule in 
India to every other which had preceded it. They 
admitted the good intentions of the English rule : 
they admitted its activity, energy, incorruptibility, 
justice. Still, the final impression was this : some- 
thing wanting in the English, something which they 
were not. Les Anglais sonf justes, mais pas Ions. 
"The English are just, but not kind and good." 

It is proposed to raise on the field of Newbury, a 
monument to a famous Englishman who was amiable. 
A meeting was held at Newbury to launch the pro- 
ject, and Lord Carnarvon made there an excellent 
speech. I believe the subscription to the monument 
does not grow very rapidly. The unamiable ones 
amongst us, the vast majority, naturally perhaps 
keep their hands in their pockets. But let us take 



VI.] FALKLAND. 155 

the opportunity, as others, too, have taken it, for at 
least recalling Falkland to memory. Let us give our 
attention for a moment to this phenomenon of an 
amiable Englishman. 
Clarendon says : — 

*'At the battle of Newbury was slain the Lord Yiscount 
Falkland ; a person of sucli prodigious parts of learning and 
knowledge, of that inimitable sweetness and delight in con- 
versation, of so glowing and obliging a humanity and goodness 
to mankind, and of that primitive simplicity and integrity of 
life, that if there were no other brand upon this odious and 
accursed Civil War than that single loss, it must be most 
infamous and execrable to all posterity. TiLrpe mori, post te, 
solo non posse dolor e." 

Clarendon's style is here a little excessive, a little 
Asiatic. And perhaps a something Asiatic is not 
wholly absent, either, from that famous passage, — 
the best known, probably, in all the History of the 
Rebellion J — that famous passage which describes Lord 
Falkland's longing for peace. 

"Sitting among his friends, often, after a deep silence and 
frecLuent sighs, he would with a shrill and sad accent ingemi- 
nate the word Peace, Peace; and would passionately profess 
that the very agony of the war, and the view of the calamities 
and desolation the kingdom did and must endure, took his 
sleep from him, and would shortly break his heart." 

Clarendon's touch, where in his memoirs he speaks 
of Falkland, is simpler than in the History. But we 
will not carp at this great writer and faithful friend. 
Falkland's life was an uneventful one, and but a few 
points in it are known to us. To Clarendon he owes 
it that each of those points is a picture. 

In his speech at Newbury Lord Carnarvon said : 
" When we look back to the history of the Civil War, 
I can think of no character that stands out in higher, 



156 MIXED ESSAYS. [vi. 

purer relief, than Falkland." " Of all the names," 
says Lord Carnarvon again, " which have come down 
to us from the Great Kebellion, none have come 
invested with higher respect and greater honour than 
the name of Lord Falkland." One asks oneself how 
this comes to be so. Falkland wrote both in verse 
and in prose. Both his verse and his prose have 
their interest, yet as a writer he scarcely counts. 
He was a gallant soldier, but gallant soldiers are not 
uncommon. He was an unsuccessful politician, and 
was reproached with deserting his party. He was 
Secretary of State for but two years, and in that 
office he accomplished, and could then accomplish, 
nothing remarkable. He was killed in the four-and- 
thirtieth year of his age. Horace Walpole pro- 
nounces him a much overrated man. But let us go 
through the scanty records of his life a little more 
deliberately. 

Lucius Gary, Lord Falkland, was born in 1610. 
His father, Sir Henry Gary, the first Lord Falkland, 
went to Ireland as Lord Deputy in 1622, and 
remained there until 1629. "The son was bred," 
says Glarendon, "in the court and in the university, 
but under the care, vigilance, and direction of such 
governors and tutors, that he learned all his exercises 
and languages better than most men do in more 
celebrated places." In 1629 the father, who appears 
to have been an able man, but violent and unfortunate, 
returned with broken fortunes to England. Shortly 
afterwards the son inherited from his maternal 
grandfather, the Lord Ghief Baron Tanfield, who in 
his will passed over his daughter and her husband 
the ex-Lord Deputy, a good estate at Burford and 
Great Tew, in Oxfordshire. At nineteen, then, the 
young Lucius Gary came into possession of " all his 
grandfather's land, with two very good houses very 



VI.] FALKLAND. 157 

well furnished (worth about £2000 per annum), in a 
most pleasant country, and the two most pleasant 
places in that country, with a very plentiful personal 
estate." But, adds Clarendon : — 

"With these advantages he had one great disadvantage 
(which in the first entrance into the world is attended with too 
much prejudice) in his person and presence, which was in no 
degree attractive or promising. His stature was low, and 
smaller than most men ; his motion not graceful, and his 
aspect so far from inviting, that it had somewhat in it of 
simplicity ; and his voice the worst of the three, and so 
untuned that instead of reconciling, it offended the ear, so that 
nobody would have expected music from that tongue ; and sure 
no man was ever less beholden to nature for its recommendation 
into the world. But then no man sooner or more disappointed 
this general and customary prejudice. That little person and 
small stature was quickly found to contain a great heart, a 
courage so keen, and a nature so fearless, that no composition 
of the strongest limbs and most harmonious and proportioned 
presence and strength ever more disposed any man to the 
greatest enterprise ; it being his greatest weakness to be too 
solicitous for such adventures. And that untuned tongue and 
voice easily discovered itself to be supplied and governed by a 
mind and understanding so excellent, that the wit and weight 
of all he said carried another kind of admiration in it, and even 
another kind of acceptation from the persons present, than any 
ornament of delivery could reasonably promise itself, or is 
usually attended with. And his disposition and nature was so 
gentle and obliging, so much delighted in courtesy, kindness, 
and generosity that all mankind could not but admire and love 
him." 

For a year or two Falkland moved in the gay life 
of London, rich, accomplished, popular, with a passion 
for soldiering, with a passion for letters. He was of 
Ben Jonson's society at the " Apollo ; " he mixed 
with Suckling, Carew, Davenant, "Waller, Sandys, 
Sir Kenelm Digby ; with Selden and Hobbes ; with 



158 MIXED ESSAYS. [vi. 

Hales of Eton and Chillingworth — great spirits in 
little bodies, these two last, like Falkland himself. 
He contracted a passionate friendship with a young 
man as promising and as universally beloved as him- 
self, Sir Henry Morison. Ben Jonson has celebrated 
it ; and it was on Morison's early death that Jonson 
wrote the beautiful lines which every one knows, 
beginning — 

" It is not growing like a tree, 
In bulk, dotli make men better be." 

Falkland married, before he was of age, Morison's 
sister. The marriage gave mortal offence to his 
father. His father had projected for the young 
Lucius, says Clarendon, a marriage which might 
mend his own broken fortunes and ruined credit 
at court. The son behaved admirably. He offered 
to resign his whole estate to his father, and to rely 
entirely upon his father's pleasure for his own main- 
tenance. He had deeds of conveyance prepared to that 
effect, and brought them to his father for signature: — 

"But Ms father's passion and indignation so far transported 
bim (tbougb be was a gentleman of excellent parts), that be 
refused any reconciliation and rejected all tbe offers tbat were 
made bim of tbe estate, so tbat bis son remained still in tbe 
possession of bis estate against bis will, for wbicb be found 
great reason afterwards to rejoice. But be was for tbe present 
so mucb afflicted witb bis fatber's displeasure tbat be trans- 
ported bimself and bis -wife into Holland, resolving to buy some 
military command, and to spend tbe remainder of bis life in 
tbat profession. But being disappointed in tbe treaty be ex- 
pected, and finding no opportunity to accommodate bimself witb 
sucb a command, be returned again into England ; resolving to 
retire to a country life and to bis books, tbat since be was not 
like to improve bimself in arms be migbt advance in letters." 

So began the convivium philosophicum, or convivium 
tJieologicum, of I'alkland's life at Great Tew. With a 



yl] FALKLAND. - 159 

genuine thoroughness of nature, with the high resolve 
to make up his mind about the matters of most vital 
concernment to man, and to make it up on good 
grounds, he plunged into study. The controversy 
with Eome was at that moment keen. Agents of 
conversion to the Eomish Church, corner-creepers as 
they were called, penetrated everywhere. Two 
young brothers of Falkland himself were won over 
by them. More and more, therefore, his thoughts 
and his studies took a theological turn. On his first 
retirement to the country he had declared, says 
Clarendon, that " he would not see London in many 
years, which was the place he loved of all the world." 
But his father's death from the effects of an accident, 
soon afterwards, forced him back for a time to 
London. Then, on his return to Oxfordshire, he 
surrounded himself with friends from the university, 
who led with him the life which Clarendon's descrip- 
tion has made memorable : — 

"His house where he usually resided (Tew or Burford, in 
Oxfordshire), being within ten or twelve miles of the university, 
looked like the university itself by the company that was always 
found there. There were Dr. Sheldon, Dr. Morley, Dr. 
Hammond, Dr. Earles, Mr. ChilKngworth, and indeed all men 
of eminent parts and faculties in Oxford, besides those who 
resorted thither from London; who all found their lodgings 
there as ready as in the colleges ; nor did the lord of the house 
know of their coming or going, nor who were in his house, till 
he came to dinner or supper where all still met. Otherwise 
there was no troublesome ceremony or constraint, to forbid men 
to come to the house, or to make them weary of staying there. 
So that many came thither to study in a better air, finding all 
the books they could desii'e in his library, and aU the persons 
together whose company they could wish, and not find in any 
other society. Here Mr. Chillingworth wrote and formed and 
modelled his excellent book against the learned Jesuit Mr. ISTott 
{The Religion of Protestants a Safe Way to Salvation), after 



160 MIXED ESSAYS. [vi. 

frequent debates upon the most important particulars ; in many 
of which he suffered himself to be overruled by the judgment of 
his friends, though in others he still adhered to his own fancy, 
which was sceptical enough even in the highest points. " 

From " this happy and delightful conversation and 
restraint " Falkland was in 1639 called away by " the 
first alarum from the north," Charles the First's 
expedition to suppress the disturbances in Scotland. 
After the return of that expedition Falkland sate in 
the Short Parliament of 1640, which preceded the 
Long Parliament. The " Short Parliament " sate but 
a few "weeks. Falkland was born a constitutionalist, 
a hater of all that is violent and arbitrary. What he 
saw in the Short Parliament made a favourable and 
deep impression upon him. "From the debates 
which were there managed with all imaginable 
gravity and solemnity, he contracted " (says Claren- 
don) "such a reverence to Parliaments that he 
thought it really impossible they could ever produce 
mischief or inconvenience to the kingdom, or that 
the kingdom could be tolerably happy in the inter- 
mission of them." 

In the next Parliament this faith in Parliaments 
was destined to be roughly shaken. The Long 
Parliament met at the end of 1640. Falkland had 
a warm admiration for Hampden, and a strong dis- 
approbation of the violent proceedings of the court. 
He acted with the popular party. He made a power- 
ful speech against ship-money. He was con-vinced of 
Strafford's guilt, and joined in his prosecution. He 
spoke vigorously for the bill to remove the bishops 
from the House of Lords. But the reason and 
moderation of the man showed itself from the first. 
Alone among his party he raised his voice against 
pressing forward Strafi'ord's impeachment with unfair 
and vindictive haste. He refused to consider, like 



vl] FALKLAND. 161 

the Puritans, the order of bishops as a thing by God's 
law either appointed or forbidden. He treated it as 
a thing expedient or inexpedient. And so foolish 
had been the conduct of the High Church bishops 
and clergy, so much and so mischievously had they 
departed from their true province, that it was ex- 
pedient at that moment, Falkland thought, to remove 
the bishops from the House of Lords. "We shall 
find them," he said of the High Church clergy, "to 
have tithed mint and anise, and have left undone the 
weightier works of the law. The most frequent sub- 
jects, even in the most sacred auditories, have been 
the jus divinum of bishops and tithes, the sacredness 
of the clergy, the sacrilege of impropriations, the 
demolishing of Puritanism." But he was careful to 
add : "We shall make no little compliment to those 
to whom this charge belongs, if we shall lay the 
faults of these men upon the order of the bishops." 
And even against these misdoing men he would join 
in no injustice. To his clear reason sacerdotalism 
was repulsive. He disliked Laud, moreover ; he had 
a natural antipathy to his heat, fussiness, and arbitrary 
temper. But he refused to concur in Laud's impeach- 
ment. 

The Lords threw out the bill for the expulsion of 
the bishops. In the same session, a few months 
later, the bill was reintroduced in the House of 
Commons. But, during this time the attitude of the 
popular party had been more and more declaring 
itself. The party had professed at first that the 
removal of the bishops from Parliament was all they 
wanted ; that they had no designs against episcopacy 
and the Church of England. The strife deepened, 
and new and revolutionary designs emerged. When, 
therefore, the bill against the bishops was reintro- 
duced, Falkland voted against it. Hampden re- 

VOL. IV. M 



162 MIXED ESSAYS. [vi. 

proached him with inconsistency. Hampden said, 
that "he was sorry to find a noble lord had changed 
his opinion since the time the last bill to this purpose 
had passed the House ; for he then thought it a good 
bill, but now he thought this an ill one." But Falk- 
land answered, that " he had been persuaded at that 
time by that worthy gentleman to believe many 
things which he had since found to be untrue, and 
therefore he had changed his opinion in many par- 
ticulars as well as to things as persons." 

The king's party availed themselves eagerly of this 
changed disposition in a man so much admired and 
respected. They pressed Falkland to come to the 
aid of the Crown, and to take office. He was ex- 
tremely loth to comply. He disapproved of the 
policy of the court party. He was for great reforms. 
He disliked Charles's obstinacy and insincerity. So 
distasteful, indeed, were they to him, that even after 
he had taken office it was difficult to him, — to him, 
the sweetest mannered of men, — to maintain towards 
Charles the same amenity which he showed towards 
every one else. Compliant as he was to others, yet 
towards the king, says Clarendon, " he did not prac- 
tise that condescension, but contradicted him with 
more bluntness and by sharp sentences ; and in some 
particulars (as of the Church) to which the king was 
in conscience most devoted ; and of this his majesty 
often complained." Falkland feared that, if he took 
office, the king would require a submission which he 
could not give. He feared, too, and to a man of his 
high spirit this thought was most galling, that his 
previous opposition to the court might be supposed 
to have had for its aim to heighten his value and to 
insure his promotion. He had no fancy, moreover, 
for official business, and believed himself unfit for it. 
Hyde at last, by earnestly pleading the considerations 



VI.] FALKLAND. 163 

which, he thought, made his friend^s acceptance of 
office a duty, overcame his reluctance. At the 
beginning of 1642 Falkland became a member of the 
King's Council, and Secretary of State. 

We approach the end. Falkland "filled his place," 
says Clarendon, "with great sufficiency, being well 
versed in languages, to understand any that are used 
in business and to make himself understood." But 
in August 1642 the Civil War broke out. With 
that departure of the public peace fled for ever Falk- 
land's own. He exposed himself at Edge-hill with 
even more than his ordinary carelessness of danger. 
As the war continued, his unhappiness grew upon 
him more and more. But let us quote Clarendon, 
who is here admirable : — 

"From Ms entrance into this unnatural war, his natural 
cheerfulness and vivacity grew clouded, and a kind of sadness 
and dejection of spirit stole upon him which he had never been 
used to. Yet being one of those who believed that one battle 
would end all differences, and that there would be so gi-eat a 
victory on one side that the other would be compelled to submit 
to any conditions from the victor (which supposition and con- 
clusion generally sank into the minds of most men, and pre- 
vented the looking after many advantages that might then have 
been laid hold of), he resisted those indispositions, et in luctii, 
lellum inter remedia erat. But after the king's return from 
Brentford, and the furious resolution of the two Houses not to 
admit any treaty for peace, those indispositions, which had be- 
fore touched him, grew into a perfect habit of uncheerfulness. 
And he who had been so exactly easy and affable to all men that 
his face and countenance was always present and vacant to his 
company, and held any cloudiness and less pleasantness of the 
visage a kind of rudeness or incivility, became on a sudden less 
communicable, and thence very sad, pale, and exceedingly 
affected with the spleen. In his clothes and habits, which he 
had minded before always with more industry and neatness and 
expense than is usual to so great a soul, he was now not only 
incurious, but too negligent. " 



164 MIXED ESSAYS. [vi. 

In this mood he came to Newbury. Before the 
battle he told one of his friends that " he was weary 
of the times and foresaw much misery to his country, 
and did believe he should be out of it ere night." 
But now, as always, the close contact with danger 
reanimated him : — 

"In the morning before tlie battle, as always upon action, 
he was very cheerful, and put himself into the first rank of the 
Lord Byron's regiment, then advancing upon the enemy, who had 
lined the hedges on both sides with musketeers ; from whence he 
was shot with a musket in the lower part of the belly, and in the 
instant falling from his horse, his body was not found till the next 
morning ; till when there was some hope he might have been a 
prisoner, though his nearest friends, who knew his temper, 
received small comfort from that imagination. Thus fell that 
incomparable young man in the four-and-thirtieth 5^ear of his 
age, having so much despatched the true business of life that 
the eldest rarely attain to that immense knowledge, and the 
youngest enter not into the world with more innocency. Who- 
soever leads such a life, needs be the less anxious upon how 
short warning it is taken from him." 

Falkland fell on the 20th of September 1643. 
His body was carried to Great Tew and buried in 
the churchyard there. But his grave is unmarked 
and unknown. The house too, in which he lived, is 
gone and replaced by a new one. The stables and 
dovecot, it is thought, existed in his time ; and in 
the park are oaks and limes on which his eyes must 
have rested. He left his estates, and the control of 
his three children, all of them sons, to his wife, with 
whom he had lived happily and in great affection. 
But the lands of Tew and Burford have long passed 
away from his family. 

And now, after this review of Falkland's life, let 
us ask whence arose that exalted esteem of him 



VI. J FALKLAND. 165 

whereof Lord Carnarvon speaks, and whether it was 
deserved. In the first place, then, he had certainly, 
except personal beauty, everything to qualify him for 
a hero to the imagination of mankind in general. 
He had rank, accomplishment, sweet temper, exquisite 
courtesy, liberality, magnanimity, superb courage, 
melancholy, misfortune, early death. Of his accom- 
plishment we have spoken. And he was accomplished, 
nay learned, " with the most dexterity and address," 
says Clarendon, " and the least pedantry and affecta- 
tion, that ever man who knew so much was possessed 
with, of what quality soever." Of his amenity w^e 
have spoken also ; of " his disposition so gentle and 
obliging, so much delighting in courtesy, that all 
mankind could not but admire and love him ; " of 
"his gentleness and affability so transcendent and 
obliging, that it drew reverence, and some kind of 
compliance, from the roughest and most unpolished 
and stubborn constitutions, and made them of another 
temper of debate, in his presence, than they were in 
other places." Equally charming was his generosity 
and delicacy to all who stood in need of help, but 
especially to those "whose fortunes required, and 
whose spirits made them superior to, ordinary obli- 
gations." Such is Clarendon's euphemistical phrase 
for poor and proud men of letters. His high-minded- 
ness is well shown in his offer, which we have already 
mentioned, to resign his fortune to his father. Let 
me quote another fine instance of it. He never would 
consent, while he was Secretary of State, to two 
practices which he found established in his office, — 
the employment of spies and the opening of letters : — 

' ' For the lirst, lie would say, such instruments must be void 
of all ingenuousness and common honesty before they could be 
of use, and afterwards they could never be fit to be credited ; 
and no single preservation could be worth so general a wound 



166 mXED ESSAYS. [vi. 

and corruption of human society, as the cherishing such persons 
would carry vnth it. The last he thought such a violation of 
the law of nature that no qualification by office could justify 
him in the trespass. " 

His courage, again, had just the characters which 
charm the imagination : — 

" Upon any occasion of action, he always engaged his person 
in those troops which he thought, by the forwardness of the 
commanders, to be most like to be farthest engaged. And in 
all such encounters he had about him an extraordinary cheer- 
fulness, -without at all affecting the execution that usually 
attended them, in which he took no delight, but took pains to 
prevent it where it was not by resistance made necessary. Inso- 
much that at Edge-hill, when the enemy was routed, he was 
like to have incurred great peril by interposing to save those 
who had thrown away their arms, and against whom, it may be, 
others were more fierce for their having thrown them aAvay. So 
that a man might think, he came into the field chiefly out of 
curiosity to see the face of danger, and charity to prevent the 
shedding of blood." 

At the siege of Gloucester, when Hyde 

"passionately reprehended him for exposing his person un- 
necessarily to danger, as being so much beside the duty of his 
place (of Secretary of State) that it might be understood rather 
to be against it, he would say merely that his office could not 
take away the privilege of his age, and that a secretary, in war, 
might be present at the greatest secret of danger ; but withal 
alleged seriously, that it concerned him to be more active in 
enterprises of hazard than other men, that all might see that 
his impatiency for peace proceeded not from pusillanimity or 
fear to adventm-e his own person, " 

To crown all, Falkland has for the imagination 
the indefinable, the irresistible charm of one who is 
and must be, in spite of the choicest gifts and graces, 
unfortunate, — of a man in the grasp of fatality. Like 
the Master of Eavenswood, that most interesting by 



VI.] FALKLAND. 167 

far of all Scott's heroes, he is surely and visibly 
touched by the finger of doom. And he knows it 
himself; yet he knits his forehead, and holds on his 
way. His course must be what it must, and he can- 
not flinch from it ; yet he loves it not, hopes nothing 
from it, foresees how it will end. 

"He had not the court in great reverence, and had a presag- 
ing spirit that the king would fall into great misfortune ; and 
often said to his friend that he chose to serve the king because 
honesty obliged him to it, but that he foresaw his own ruin by 
doing it." 

Yes, for the imagination Falkland cannot but be 
a figure of ideal, pathetic beauty. But for the judg- 
ment, for sober reason 1 Here opinions diff'er. 

Lord Carnarvon insisted on the salutary example 
of Falkland's moderation. The Dean of Westminster, 
who could not go to the Newbury meeting, wrote to 
say that in his opinion Falkland " is one of the few 
examples of political eminence unconnected with 
party, or rather equally connected with both parties ; 
and he is the founder, or nearly the founder, of the 
best and most enlightening tendencies of the Church 
of England." And Principal Tulloch, whose chapter 
on Falkland is perhaps the most delightful chapter 
of his delightful book,^ calls him " the inspiring chief 
of a circle of rational and moderate thinkers amidst 
the excesses of a violent and dogmatic age," 

On the other hand, the Spectator pronounces Falk- 
land to have been capricious and unstable, rather 
than truly moderate. It thinks that "he was vacil 
lating, and did not count the cost of what he under- 
took." It judges his life to have been wasted. It 
says that " the heart of moderation is strength," and 
that "it seems to us easier to maintain that either 

1 national Theology in England in the Seventeenth Century. 



168 MIXED ESSAYS. [vi. 

Cromwell, or Pym, or Hampden, or Fairfax, presented 
the true type of moderation, than Falkland." Falk- 
land recoiled, and changed sides ; the others recog- 
nised the duty for a man " to take strong measures, 
if none less strong will secure an end which he deems 
of supreme importance." 

Severe, too, upon Falkland, as might be expected, 
is the Nonconformist. It talks of his " amiable and 
hesitating inconsistency." It says that he was moved 
by " intellectual perception and spiritual sentiment " 
rather than by "moral impulse," while the Puritan 
leaders were "moved mainly by moral impulse." It 
adds that " the greatest reformers have always been 
those who have been swayed by moral feeling rather 
than by intellectual conceptions, and the greatest 
reforming movements have been those accomplished 
not by the enlightened knowledge of a few, but by 
the moral enthusiasm of the many." The Puritan 
leaders had faith. "They drew no complete picture 
of the ideal to be arrived at. But they were firmly 
and fixedly resolved, that, come what might, the 
wrongs of which they were conscious should not be 
endured." They followed, then, the voice of con- 
science and of duty; "and, broadly speaking, the 
voice of conscience is the voice of God." And there- 
fore, while Falkland's death "has a special sadness 
as the end of an inconsistent and in a certain sense 
of a wasted life, on the other hand the death of 
Hampden was a martyr's seal to truths assured of 
ultimate triumph." 

Truths assured of ultimate triumph ! let us pause 
upon those words. The Puritans were victors in the 
Civil War, and fashioned things to their own liking. 
How far was their system at home an embodiment of 
"truth'?" Let us consult a great writer, too little 
read. Who now reads Bolinghroke? asked Burke 



VI.] FALKLAND. 169 

scornfully. And the right answer is, so far as regards, 
at any rate, the historical writings of Bolingbroke : "Far 
too few of us ; the more's the pity ! " But let us hear 
Bolingbroke on the success of Puritanism at home : — 

"Cavaliers and Roundheads had divided the nation, like 
Yorkists and Lancastrians. To reconcile these disputes by 
treaty became im^Jracticable, when neither side would trust the 
other. To terminate them by the sword was to fight, not for 
preserving the constitution, but for the manner of destroying it. 
The constitution might have been destroyed under pretence of 
prerogative. It was destroyed under pretence of liberty. We 
might have fallen under absolute monarchy. "VVe fell into 
absolute anarchy." 

And to escape from that anarchy, the nation, as every 
one knows, swung back into the very hands from 
which Puritanism had wrested it, to the bad and 
false system of government of the Stuarts. 

But the Puritan government, though it broke 
down at home, was a wise and grand government 
abroad. No praise is more commonly heard than 
this. But it will not stand. The Puritan govern- 
ment, Cromwell's government, was a strong govern- 
ment abroad; a wise and true -sighted government 
abroad it was not. Again let us hear Bolingbroke : — 

"Our Charles the First was no great politician, and yet he 
seemed to discern that the balance of power was turning in 
favour of France, some years before the treaties of AYestj^halia. 
He refused to be neuter, and threatened to take part with Spain. 
Cromwell either did not discern this turn of the balance of 
power, long afterward when it was much more visible ; or, dis- 
cerning it, he was induced by reasons of private interest to act 
against the general interest of Europe. Cromwell joined with 
France against Spain ; and though he got Jamaica and Dun- 
kirk, he drove the Spaniards into a necessity of making a peace 
with France, that has disturbed the peace of the world almost 
fourscore years, and the consequences of which have well-nigh 
beggared in our times the nation he enslaved in his." 



170 MIXED ESSAYS. [vi. 

Bolingbroke deals in strong language, but there can 
be no doubt that the real imminent danger for Europe, 
in Cromwell's time, was French ambition and French 
aggrandisement. There can be no doubt that Crom- 
well either did not discern this, or acted as if he did 
not discern it ; and that Europe had to bear, in con- 
sequence, the infliction of the Grand Monarch and of 
all he brought with him. 

But is it meant that the Puritan triumph was the 
triumph of religion, — of conduct and righteousness ? 
Alas ! it was its defeat. So grossly imperfect, so 
false, was the Puritan conception and presentation 
of righteousness, so at war with the ancient and 
inbred integrity, piety, good nature, and good humour 
of the English people, that it led straight to moral 
anarchy, the profligacy of the Eestoration. It led to 
the court, the manners, the stage, the literature, which 
we know. It led to the long discredit of serious 
things, to the dryness of the eighteenth century, to 
the " irreligion " which vexed Butler's righteous soul, 
to the aversion and incapacity for all deep inquiries 
concerning religion and its sanctions, to the belief so 
frequently found now among the followers of natural 
science that such inquiries are unprofitable. It led 
amongst that middle class where religion still lived 
on, to a narrowness, an intellectual poverty, almost 
incredible. They " entered the prison of Puritanism, 
and had the key turned upon their spirit there for 
two hundred years." It led to that character of their 
steady and respectable life which makes one shiver : 
its hideousness, its immense ennui. 

But is it meant, finally, that, after all, political 
liberty re-emerged in England, seriousness re-emerged; 
that they re-emerged and prevail, and that herein, 
and in the England of to-day, is the triumph of 
Puritanism 1 Yes, this is what is really meant. It 



VI.] FALKLAND. 171 

is very commonly believed and asserted. But let us 
imitate the society of Great Tew, and make it our 
business ''to examine and refine those grosser pro- 
positions which laziness and consent make current in 
vulgar conversation." Undoubtedly there has been 
a result from the long travail which England has 
passed through between the times of the Eenascence 
and our own. Something has come of it all ; and 
that something is the England of to-day, with its 
seriousness, such as it is, with its undeniable political 
liberty. Let us be thankful for what we have, and 
to the Puritans for their share in producing it. But, 
in the first place, is it certain that the England of 
to-day is the best imaginable and possible result from 
the elements with which we started at the Renas- 
cence 1 Because, if not, then by some other shaping 
of events, and without the Puritan triumph, we 
might conceivably have stood even yet better than 
we stand now. In the second place, is it certain that 
of the good which we admittedly have in the England 
of to-day, — the seriousness and the political liberty, 
— the Puritans and the Puritan triumph are the 
authors 1 The assumption that they are so is plaus- 
ible, — it is current ; it pervades, let me observe in 
passing, Mr. Green's fascinating History. But is the 
assumption sounds When one considers the strength, 
the boldness, the self-assertion, the instincts of resist- 
ance and independence in the English nature, it is 
surely hazardous to affirm that only by the particular 
means of the Puritan struggle and the Puritan 
triumph could we have become free in our persons 
and property. When we consider the character 
shown, the signal given, in the thinking of Thomas 
More and Shakespeare, of Bacon and Harvey, how 
shall we say that only at the price of Puritanism, 
could England have had free thought*? When we 



172 MIXED ESSAYS. [vi. 

consider the seriousness of Spenser, that ideal Puritan 
before the fanatical Puritans and without their faults ; 
when we consider Spenser's seriousness and pureness, 
in their revolt against the moral disorder of the 
Eenascence, and remember the allies which they had 
in the native integrity and piety of the English race, 
shall we even venture to say that only at the price 
of Puritanism could we have had seriousness 1 Puri- 
tanism has been one element in our seriousness ; but 
it is not the whole of our seriousness, nor the best 
in it. 

Falkland himself was profoundly serious. He was 
"in his nature so severe a lover of justice and so 
precise a lover of truth, that he was superior to all 
possible temptations for the violation of either." 
Far from being a man flighty and unstable, he was a 
man, says Clarendon, constant and pertinacious ; " con- 
stant and pertinacious, and not to be wearied with 
any pains." And he was, as I have said, a born 
constitutionalist, a hater of "exorbitances" of all 
kinds, governmental or popular. He "thought no 
mischief so intolerable as the presumption of ministers 
of state to break positive rules for reasons of state, 
or judges to transgress known laws upon the title of 
conveniency or necessity ; which made him so severe 
against the Earl of Strafford and the Lord Finch, 
contrary to his natural gentleness and temper." He 
had the historic sense in politics; an aversion to 
root-and-branch work, to what he called "great 
mutations." He was for using compromise and 
adjustment, for keeping what had long served and 
what was ready to hand, but amending it and turning 
it to better account. " I do not believe bishops to be 
jure divino,'^ he would say ; " nay, I believe them not 
to be jure divine.^' Still, he was not disposed to 
" root up this ancient tree." He had no superstition 



VI.] FALKLAND. ~ 173 

about it. "He had in his own judgment," says 
Clarendon, " such a latitude in opinion that he did 
not believe any part of the order or government of it 
to be so essentially necessary to religion, but that it 
might be parted with and altered for a notable public 
benefit or convenience." On the other hand, "he 
was never in the least degree swayed or moved by 
the objections which were made against that govern- 
ment (episcopacy) in the Church, holding them most 
ridiculous ; or affected to the other which those men 
(the Puritans) fancied to themselves." There Epis- 
copacy and the Church of England had been for ages, 
and it was the part of a statesman, Falkland thought, 
rather to use them than to destroy them. All this 
is in the very spirit of English political liberty, as we 
now conceive it, and as, by the Revolution of 1688, 
it triumphed. But it is not in the spirit of the 
Puritans. The truths assured of ultimate triumph 
were, then, so far as political liberty is concerned, 
rather with Falkland than with the Puritans. 

It was his historic sense, again, which made him, 
when compromise was plainly impossible, side with 
the king. Things had come, and by no fault of 
Falkland, to that pass, when the contention, as 
Bolingbroke truly says, was " not for preserving the 
constitution but for the manner of destroying it." In 
such a juncture Falkland looked for the best power or 
purchase, to use Burke's excellent expression, that he 
could find. He thought he found it in the Crown. 
He thought the Parliament a less available power or 
purchase than the Crown. He thought renovation 
more possible by means of the triumph of the Crown 
than by means of the triumph of the Parliament. 
He thought the triumph of the Parliament the greater 
leap into chaos. He may have been wrong. Whether 
a better result might have been got out of the Parlia- 



174 MIXED ESSAYS. [vi. 

merit's defeat than was got out of its triumph we can 
never know. What is certain is that the Parliament's 
triumph did bring things to a dead-lock, that the 
nation reverted to the monarchy, and that the final 
victory was neither for Stuarts nor Puritans. And 
it could not be for either of them, for the cause of 
neither was sound. Falkland had lucidity enough to 
see it. He gave himself to the cause which seemed 
to him least unsound, and to which "honesty," he 
thought, bound him ; but he felt that the truth was 
not there, any more than with the Puritans, — 
neither the truth nor the future. This is what 
makes his figure and situation so truly tragic. For 
a sound cause he could not fight, because there was 
none ; he could only fight for the least bad of two 
unsound ones. "Publicans and sinners on the one 
side," as Chillingworth said ; " Scribes and Pharisees 
on the other." And Falkland had, I say, the lucidity 
of mind and the largeness of temper to see it. 

Shall we blame him for his lucidity of mind and 
largeness of temper ? Shall we even pity him ? By 
no means. They are his great title to our veneration. 
They are what make him ours ; what link him with 
the nineteenth century. He and his friends, by 
their heroic and hopeless stand against the inadequate 
ideals dominant in their time, kept open their com- 
munications with the future, lived with the future. 
Their battle is ours too ; and that we pursue it with 
fairer hopes of success than they did, we owe to 
their having waged it and fallen. To our English 
race, with its insularity, its profound faith in action, 
its contempt for dreamers and failers, inadequate 
ideals in life, manners, government, thought, religion, 
will always be a source of danger. Energetic action 
makes up, we think, for imperfect knowledge. We 
think that all is well, that a man is following "a 



VI.] FALKLAND. 175 

moral impulse," if he pursues an end which he 
" deems of supreme importance." We impose neither 
on him nor on ourselves the duty of discerning 
whether he is right in deeming it so. 

Hence our causes are often as small as our noise 
about them is great. To see people busy themselves 
about Eitualism, that question of not the most strong- 
minded portion of the clergy and laity, or to see 
them busy themselves about that " burning question " 
of the fierce and acrimonious political Dissenters, the 
Burials Bill, leading up to the other " burning ques- 
tion" of Disestablishment — to see people so eager 
about these things, one might sometimes fancy that 
the whole English nation, as in Chillingworth's time 
it was divided into two great hosts of publicans and 
sinners on the one side, Scribes and Pharisees on the 
other, so in ours it was going to divide itself into 
two vast camps of Simpletons here, under the 
command, suppose, of Mr. Beresford Hope, and of 
Savages there, under the command of Mr. Henry 
Eichard. And it is so notorious that great move- 
ments are always led by aliens to the sort of people 
who make the mass of the movement — by gifted 
outsiders — that I shall not, I hope, be suspected of 
implying that Mr. Beresford Hope is a simpleton or 
Mr. Henry Eichard a savage. But what we have to 
do is to raise and multiply in this country a third 
host, with the conviction that the ideals both of 
Simpletons and Savages are profoundly inadequate and 
profoundly unedifying, and with the resolve to win 
victory for a better ideal than that of either of them. 

Falkland and his friends had in their day a hke 
task. On the one hand was the Eoyalist party, with 
its vices, its incurable delusions ; on the other, the 
Puritans, with their temper, their false, old- Jewish 
mixture of politics with an ill-understood religion. 



176 MIXED ESSAYS. [vi. 

I should have been glad to say not one word against 
Hampden in his honourable grave. But the lovers 
of Hampden cannot forbear to extol him at Falkland's 
expense. Alas ! yet with what benign disdain might 
not Jesus have whispered to that exemplary but 
somewhat Philistine Buckinghamshire squire, seeking 
the Lord about militia or ship-money : " Man, who 
made me a judge or a divider over you V 

No, the true martyr was not Hampden. If we 
are to find a martyr in the history of the Great Civil 
War, let it be Falkland. He was the martjrr of 
lucidity of mind and largeness of temper, in a strife 
of imperfect intelligences and tempers illiberal. Like 
his friend Hales of Eton, who in our century will 
again, he too, emerge, after having been long obscured 
by the Lauds and the Sheldons, by the Owens and 
the Baxters, — like Hales, Falkland in that age of 
harsh and rancorous tempers was "of a natnre so 
kind, so sweet, that it was near as easy a task for 
any one to become so knowing as so obliging." Like 
Hales, too, Falkland could say : " The pursuit of 
truth hath been my only care ever since I fully 
understood the meaning of the word. For this I 
have forsaken all hopes, all friends, all desires which 
might bias me, and hinder me from driving right at 
what I aimed." Like Hales, and unlike our nation 
in general, Falkland concerned himself with the why 
of things as well as the what. " I comprise it all," 
says Hales, "in two words; what and wherefore. 
That part of your harden which contains what, you 
willingly take up. But that other, which comprehends 
tvhy, that is either too hot or too heavy ; you dare 
not meddle with it. But I must add that also to 
your burden, or else I must leave you for idle persons ; 
for without the knowledge of why, of the grounds or 
reasons of things, there is no possibility of not being 



VI.] FALKLAND. 177 

deceived." How countless are the deceived and 
deceiving from this cause ! Nay, and the fanatics of 
the li'hat, the neglecters of the ichj, are not un- 
frequently men of genius ; they have the temperament 
which influences, which prevails, which acts magneti- 
cally upon men. So we have the Philistine of genius 
in religion, — Luther; the Philistine of genius in 
politics, — Cromwell; the Philistine of genius in 
literature, — Bunyan. All three of them, let us 
remark, are Germanic, and two of them are English. 
Mr. Freeman must be enchanted. 

But let us return to Falkland, — to our martyr of 
sweetness and light, of lucidity of mind and largeness 
of temper. Let us bid him farewell, not with com- 
passion for him, and not with excuses, but in 
confidence and pride. Slowly, very slowly, his ideal 
of lucidity of mind and largeness of temper conquers; 
but it conquers. In the end it will prevail ; only we 
must have patience. The day will come when this 
nation shall be renewed by it. But, lime-trees of 
Tew, and quiet Oxfordshire fieldbanks where the first 
violets are even now raising their heads ! — how often, 
ere that day arrive for Englishmen, shall your renewal 
be seen ! 



VOL. IV. 



yii. 

A FEENCH CEITIC ON MILTOK 

Mr. Trevelyan's Life of his uncle must have induced 
many people to read again Lord Macaulay's Essay on 
Milton. With the Essay on Milton began Macaulay's 
literary career, and, brilliant as the career was, it had 
few points more brilliant than its beginning. Mr. 
Trevelyan describes with animation that decisive first 
success. The essay appeared in the Edinburgh Eevietu 
in 1825. Mr. Trevelyan says, and quite truly: — 

"The effect on tlie author's reputation was instantaneous. 
Like Lord Byron, he awoke one morning and found himself 
famous. The beauties of the work were such as all men could 
recognise, and its very faults pleased. . . . The family breakfast- 
table in Bloomsbury was covered with cards of invitation to 
dinner from every quarter of London, ... A warm admirer of 
Robert Hall, Macaulay heard Avith pride how the great preacher, 
then well-nigh worn out with that long disease, his life, was 
discovered lying on the floor, employed in learning by aid of 
grammar and dictionary enough Italian to enable him to verify 
the parallel between Milton and Dante, But the compliment 
that, of all others, came most nearly home, — the only com- 
mendation of his literary talent which even in the innermost 
domestic circle he was ever known to repeat, — was the sentence 
with which Jeffrey acknowledged the receipt of his manuscript : 
' The more I think, the less I can conceive where you picked 
up that style.'" 



vil] a FRENCH CRITIC ON MILTON. 179 

And already, in the Essay on Milton , the style of 
Macaulay is, indeed, that which we know so well. A 
style to dazzle, to gain admirers everywhere, to attract 
imitators in multitude ! A style brilliant, metallic, 
exterior ; making strong points, alternating invective 
with eulogy, wrapping in a robe of rhetoric the thing 
it represents j not, Avith the soft play of life, following 
and rendering the thing's very form and pressure. 
For, indeed, in rendering things in this fashion, 
Macaulay 's gift did not lie. Mr. Trevelyan reminds 
us that in the preface to his collected Essays, Lord 
Macaulay himself " unsparingly condemns the redun- 
dance of youthful enthusiasm" of the Essay on 
Milton. But the unsoundness of the essay does not 
spring from its " redundance of youthful enthusiasm." 
It springs from this : that the writer has not for his 
aim to see and to utter the real truth about his object. 
Whoever comes to the Essay on Milton with the 
desire to get at the real truth about Milton, whether 
as a man or as a poet, will feel that the essay in nowise 
helps him. A reader who only wants rhetoric, a 
reader who wants a panegyric on Milton, a panegyric 
on the Puritans, will find what he wants. A reader 
who wants criticism will be disappointed. 

This would be palpable to all the world, and 
every one would feel, not pleased, but disappointed, 
by the Essay on Milton, were it not that the readers 
who seek for criticism are extremely few ; while the 
readers who seek for rhetoric, or who seek for praise 
and blame to suit their own already established likes 
and dislikes, are extremely many. A man who is 
fond of rhetoric may find pleasure in hearing that in 
Paradise Lost " Milton's conception of love unites all 
the voluptuousness of the Oriental haram, and all the 
■gallantry of the chivalric tournament, with all the 
pure and quiet affection of an English fireside." He 



180 MIXED ESSAYS. [vii. 

may glow at being told that " Milton's thoughts 
resemble those celestial fruits and flowers which the 
Virgin Martyr of Massinger sent down from the 
gardens of Paradise to the earth, and which were 
distinguished from the productions of other souls not 
only by superior bloom and sweetness, but by 
miraculous efficacy to invigorate and to heal." He 
may imagine that he has got something profound 
when he reads that, if we compare Milton and Dante 
in their management of the agency of supernatural 
beings, — " the exact details of Dante with the dim 
intimations of Milton," — the right conclusion of the 
whole matter is this : — 

" Milton wrote in an age of philosophers and theologians. 
It was necessary, therefore, for him to abstain from giving such 
a shock to their understandings as might break the charm which 
it was his object to throw over their imaginations. It was 
impossible for him to adopt altogether the material or the 
immaterial system. He therefore took his stand on the debate- 
able ground. He left the whole in ambiguity. He has doubt- 
less, by so doing, laid himself open to the charge of inconsistency. 
But though philosophically in the wrong he was poetically in 
the right." 

Poor Eobert Hall, " well-nigh worn out with that 
long disease, his life," and, in the last precious days 
of it, " discovered lying on the floor, employed in 
learning, by aid of grammar and dictionary, enough 
Italian to enable him to verify " this ingenious criti- 
cism ! Alas ! even had his life been prolonged like 
Hezekiah's, he could not have verified it, for it is 
un verifiable. A poet .who, writing "in an age of 
philosophers and theologians," finds it "impossible 
for him to adopt altogether the material or the im- 
material system," who, therefore, "takes his stand on 
the debateable ground," who "leaves the whole in 
ambiguity," and who, in doing so, " though philoso- 



VII.] A FRENCH CRITIC ON MILTON. 181 

phically in the wrong, was poetically in the right ! " 
Substantial meaning such lucubrations have none. 
And in like manner, a distinct and substantial 
meaning can never be got out of the fine phrases 
about "Milton's conception of love uniting all the 
voluptuousness of the Oriental haram, and all the 
gallantry of the chivalric tournament, with all the 
pure and quiet affection of an English fireside;" or 
about " Milton's thoughts resembling those celestial 
fruits and flowers which the Virgin Martyr of 
Massinger sent down from the gardens of Paradise 
to the earth;" the phrases are mere rhetoric. 
Macaulay's writing passes for being admirably clear, 
and so externally it is ; but often it is really obscure, 
if one takes his deliverances seriously, and seeks to 
find in them a definite meaning. However, there is 
a multitude of readers, doubtless, for whom it is 
sufficient to have their ears tickled with fine rhetoric; 
but the tickling makes a serious reader impatient. 

Many readers there are, again, who come to an 
Essay on Milton with their minds full of zeal for the 
Puritan cause, and for Milton as one of the glories 
of Puritanism. Of such readers the great desire is to 
have the cause and the man, who are already estab- 
lished objects of enthusiasm for them, strongly 
praised. Certainly Macaulay will satisfy their desire. 
They will hear that the Civil War was " the great 
conflict between Oromasdes and Arimanes, liberty 
and despotism, reason and prejudice ;" the Puritans 
being Oromasdes, and the Royalists Arimanes. They 
will be told that the great Puritan poet was worthy 
of the august cause which he served. His radiant 
and beneficent career resembled that of the god of 
light and fertility. "There are a few characters 
which have stood the closest scrutiny and the sever- 
est tests, which have been tried in the furnace and 



182 MIXED ESSAYS. [vii. 

have proved pure, which have been declared sterlmg 
by the general consent of mankind, and which are 
visibly stamped with the image and superscription of 
the Most High. Of these was Milton." To descend 
a little to particulars. Milton's temper was especially 
admirable. "The gloom of Dante's character dis- 
colours all the passions of men and all the face of 
nature, and tinges with its own livid hue the flowers 
of Paradise and the glories of the eternal throne." 
But in our countryman, although "if ever despond- 
ency and asperity could be excused in any man, 
they might have been excused in Milton," nothing 
"had power to disturb his sedate and majestic 
patience." All this is just what an ardent admirer 
of the Puritan cause and of Milton would most wish 
to hear, and when he hears it he is in ecstasies. 

But a disinterested reader, whose object is not to 
hear Puritanism and Milton glorified, but to get at 
the truth about them, will surely be dissatisfied. 
With what a heavy brush, he will say to himself, 
does this man lay on his colours! The Puritans 
Ororaasdes, and the Eoyalists Arimanes 1 What a 
different strain from Chillingworth's, in his sermon 
at Oxford at the beginning of the Civil War ! 
" Publicans and sinners on the one side," said Chill- 
ingworth, "Scribes and Pharisees on the other." 
Not at all a conflict between Oromasdes and Arimanes, 
but a good deal of Arimanes on both sides. And as 
human affairs go, Chillingworth's version of the 
matter is likely to be nearer the truth than Macau- 
lay's. Indeed, for any one who reads thoughtfully 
and without bias, Macaulay himself, with the incon- 
sistency of a born rhetorician, presently confutes his 
own thesis. He says of the Royalists : " They had 
far more both of profound and of polite learning than 
the Puritans. Their manners were more engaging, 



VII.] A FEENCH CRITIC ON MILTON. 183 

their tempers more amiable, their tastes more elegant, 
and their households more cheerful." Is being more 
kindly affectioned such an insignificant superiority ? 
The Eoyalists too, then, in spite of their being insuffici- 
ently jealous for civil and ecclesiastical liberty, had in 
them something of Oromasdes, the principle of light. 

And Milton's temper ! His " sedate and majestic 
patience;" his freedom from "asperity!" If there 
is a defect which, above all others, is signal in Milton, 
which injures him even intellectually, which limits 
him as a poet, it is the defect common to him with 
the whole Puritan party to which he belonged, — the 
fatal defect of temper. He and they may have a 
thousand merits, but they are unamiable. Excuse 
them how one will, Milton's asperity and acerbity, 
his want of sweetness of temper, of the Shakspearian 
largeness and indulgence, are undeniable. Lord 
Macaulay in his Essay regrets that the prose writings 
of Milton should not be more read. " They abound," 
he says in his rhetorical way, " with passages, com- 
pared with which the finest declamations of Burke 
sink into insignificance." At any rate, they enable 
us to judge of Milton's temper, of his freedom from 
asperity. Let us open the Doctrine and Discipline of 
Divorce and see how Milton treats an opponent. 
" How should he, a serving man both by nature and 
function, an idiot by breeding, and a solicitor by 
presumption, ever come to know or feel within himself 
what the meaning is of gentle?'' What a gracious 
temper ! " At last, and in good hour, we come to 
his farewell, which is to be a concluding taste of liis 
jabberment in law, the flashiest and the fustiest that 
ever corrupted in such an unswilled hogshead." How 
" sedate and majestic !" 

Human progress consists in a continual increase 
in the number of those, who, ceasing to live by the 



184 MIXED ESSAYS. [vii. 

animal life alone and to feel the pleasures of sense 
only, come to participate in the intellectual life also, 
and to find enjoyment in the things of the mind. 
The enjoyment is not at first very discriminating. 
Rhetoric, brilliant writing, gives to such persons 
pleasure for its own sake ; but it gives them pleasure, 
still more, when it is employed in commendation of 
a view of life which is on the whole theirs, and of 
men and causes with which they are naturally in 
sympathy. The immense popularity of Macaulay is 
due to his being pre-eminently fitted to give pleasure 
to all who are beginning to feel enjoyment in the 
things of the mind. It is said that the traveller in 
Australia, visiting one settler's hut after another, 
finds again and again that the settler's third book, 
after the Bible and Shakspeare, is some work by 
Macaulay. Nothing can be more natural. The 
Bible and Shakspeare may be said to be imposed 
upon an Enghshman as objects of his admiration; 
but as soon as the common Englishman, desiring 
culture, begins to choose for himself, he chooses 
Macaulay. Macaulay's view of things is, on the 
whole, the view of them which he feels to be his 
own also ; the persons and causes praised are those 
which he himself is disposed to admire ; the persons 
and causes blamed are those with which he himself 
is out of sympathy; and the rhetoric employed to 
praise or to blame them is animating and excellent. 
Macaulay is thus a great civiliser. In hundreds of 
men he hits their nascent taste for the things of the 
mind, possesses himself of it and stimulates it, draws 
it powerfully forth and confirms it. 

But with the increasing number of those who 
awake to the intellectual life, the number of those 
also increases, who having awoke to it, go on with 
it, follow where it leads them. And it leads them 



VII.] A FEENCH CEITIC OX MILTON. 185 

to see that it is their business to learn the real truth 
about the important men, and things, and books, 
which interest the human mind. For thus is grad- 
ually to be acquired a stock of sound ideas, in which 
the mind will habitually move, and which alone can 
give to our judgments security and solidity. To be 
satisfied with fine writing about the object of one's 
study, with having it praised or blamed in accordance 
with one's own likes or dislikes, with any conven- 
tional treatment of it whatever, is at this stage of 
growth seen to be futile. At this stage, rhetoric, 
even when it is so good as Macaulay's dissatisfies. 
And the number of people who have reached this 
stage of mental growth is constantly, as things now 
are, increasing ; increasing by the very same law of 
progress which plants the beginnings of mental life 
in more and more persons who, until now, have 
never known mental life at all. So that while the 
number of those who are delighted with rhetoric such 
as Macaulay's is always increasing, the number of those 
who are dissatisfied with it is always increasing too. 

And not only rhetoric dissatisfies people at this 
stage, but conventionality of any kind. This is the 
fault of Addison's Miltonic criticism, once so cele- 
brated ; it rests almost entirely upon convention. 
Here is Paradise Lost, " a work which does an honour 
to the English nation," a work claiming to be one of 
the great poems of the world, to be of the highest 
moment to us. " The Paradise Lost" says Addison, 
" is looked upon by the best judges as the greatest 
production, or at least the noblest work of genius, in 
our language, and therefore deserves to be set before 
an English reader in its full beauty." The right 
thing, surely, is for such a work to prove its own 
virtue by powerfully and delightfully afi'ecting us as 
we read it, and by remaining a constant source of 



186 MIXED ESSAYS. [vii. 

elevation and happiness to us for ever. But the 
Paradise Lost has not this effect certainly and univer- 
sally ; therefore Addison proposes to " set before an 
English reader, in its full beauty," the great poem. 
To this end he has " taken a general view of it under 
these four heads : the fable, the characters, the sen- 
timents, and the language." He has, moreover, 

** endeavoured not only to prove that the poem is beautiful in 
general, but to point out its x^articular beauties and to deter- 
mine wherein they consist. I have endeavoured to show how 
some passages are beautified by being sublime, others by being 
soft, others by being natural ; which of them are recommended 
by the passion, which by the moral, which by the sentiment, 
and which by the expression. I have likewise endeavoured to 
show how the genius of the poet shines by a happy invention, 
or distant allusion, or a judicious imitation ; how he has copied 
or improved Homer or Yirgil, and raises his own imagination 
by the use which he has made of several poetical passages in 
Scripture. I might have inserted also several passages in Tasso 
which our author has imitated ; but as I do not look upon Tasso 
to be a sufficient voucher, I would not perplex my reader with 
such quotations as might do more honour to the Italian than 
the English poet." 

This is the sort of criticism which held our grand- 
fathers and great-grandfathers speU-bound in solemn 
reverence. But it is all based upon convention, and 
on the positivism of the modern reader it is thrown 
away. Does the work which you praise, he asks, 
affect me with high pleasure and do me good, when 
I try it as fairly as I can ? The critic who helps such 
a questioner is one who has sincerely asked himself, 
also, this same question ; who has answered it in a 
way which agrees, in the main, with what the ques- 
tioner finds to be his own honest experience in the 
matter, and who shows the reasons for this common 
experience. Where is the use of telling a man, who 



vu.] A FEEXCH CRITIC OX MILTOX. 187 

finds himself tired rather than delighted by Paradise 
Lost, that the incidents in that poem " have in them 
all the beauties of novelty, at the same time that they 
have all the graces of nature : " that " though they 
are natural, they are not obvious, which is the true 
character of all fine -syriting " 1 Where is the use of 
telling him that "Adam and Eve are drawn with 
such sentiments as do not only interest the reader 
in their afflictions, but raise in him the most melting 
passions of humanity and commiseration " % His own 
experience, on the other hand, is that the incidents 
in Paradise Lost are such as awaken in him but the 
most languid interest; and that the afflictions and 
sentiments of Adam and Eve never melt or move 
him passionately at all. How is he advanced by 
hearing that "it is not sufflcient that the language 
of an epic poem be perspicuous, unless it be also 
sublime ;" and that Milton's language is both ? 
What avails it to assure him that " the first thing 
to be considered in an epic poem is the fable, which 
is perfect or imperfect, according as the action which 
it relates is more or less so ; " that " this action 
should have three qualifications, should be but one 
action, an entire action, and a great action^' and 
that if we " consider the action of the Lliad, ^neid, 
and Paradise Lost, in these three several lights, we 
shall find that Milton's poem does not fall short in 
the beauties which are essential to that kind of writ- 
ing " ? The patient whom Addison thus doctors will 
reply, that he does not care two straws whether the 
action of Paradise Lost satisfies the proposed test or 
no, if the poem does not give him pleasure. The 
truth is, Addison's criticism rests on certain conven- 
tions : namely, that incidents of a certain class must 
awaken keen interest ; that sentiments of a certain 
kind must raise melting passions ; that language of a 



188 MIXED ESSAYS. [vii. 

certain strain, and an action with certain qualifications, 
must render a poem attractive and eifective. Disregard 
the convention ; ask solely whether the incidents do 
interest, whether the sentiments do move, whether 
the poem is attractive and effective, and Addison's 
criticism collapses. 

Sometimes the convention is one which in theory 
ought, a man may perhaps admit, to be something 
more than a convention ; but which yet practically 
is not. Milton's poem is of surpassing interest to us, 
says Addison, because in it, " the principal actors are 
not only our progenitors but our representatives. We 
have an actual interest in everything they do, and no 
less than our utmost happiness is concerned, and lies 
at stake, in all their behaviour." Of ten readers who 
may even admit that in theory this is so, barely one 
can be found whose practical experience tells him 
that Adam and Eve do really, as his representatives, 
excite his interest in this vivid manner. It is by a 
mere convention, then, that Addison supposes them 
to do so, and claims an advantage for Milton's poem 
from the supposition. 

The theological speeches in the third book of Para- 
dise Lost are not, in themselves, attractive poetry. 
But, says Addison : — 

'* The passions which they are designed to raise are a divine 
love and religious fear. The particular beauty of the speeches 
in the third book consists in that shortness and perspicuity of 
style in which the poet has couched the greatest mysteries of 
Christianity. ... He has represented all the abstruse doctrines 
of predestination, free-will, and gi'ace, as also the great points 
of incarnation and redemption (which naturally grow up in a 
poem that treats of the fall of man) with great energy of expres- 
sion, and in a clearer and stronger light than I ever met with 
in any other writer. " 

But nine readers out of ten feel that, as a matter 



VII.] A FRENCH CRITIC ON MILTON. 189 

of fact, their religious sentiments of " divine love and 
religious fear " are wholly ineffectual even to reconcile 
them to the poetical tiresomeness of the speeches in 
question : far less can they render them interesting. 
It is by a mere convention, then, that Addison pre- 
tends that they do. 

The great merit of Johnson's criticism on Milton 
is that from rhetoric and convention it is free. Mr. 
Trevelyan says that the enthusiasm of Macaulay's 
Essay on Milton is, at any rate, " a relief from the 
perverted ability of that elaborate libel on our great 
epic poet, which goes by the name of Dr. Johnson's Life 
of Milton" This is too much in Lord Macaulay's own 
style. In Johnson's Life of Milton we have the straight- 
forward remarks, on Milton and his works, of a very 
acute and robust mind. Often they are thoroughly 
sound. "What we know of Milton's character in 
domestic relations is that he was severe and arbitrary. 
His family consisted of women ; and there appears 
in his books something like a Turkish contempt of 
females as subordinate and inferior beings." Mr. Tre- 
velyan will forgive our saying that the truth is here 
much better hit than in Lord Macaulay's sentence 
telling us how Milton's " conception of love unites all 
the voluptuousness of the Oriental haram, and all the 
gallantry of the chivalric tournament, with all the 
pure and quiet affection of an English fireside." But \ 
Johnson's mind, acute and robust as it was, was at 1 
many points bounded, at many points warped. He 
was neither sufficiently disinterested, nor sufficiently 
flexible, nor sufficiently receptive, to be a satisfying 
critic of a poet like Milton. " Surely no man could 
have fancied that he read Lycidas with pleasure had 
he not known the author ! " Terrible sentence for 
revealing the deficiencies of the critic who utters it. 

A completely disinterested judgment about a man 



190 MIXED ESSAYS. [vii. 

like Milton is easier to a foreign critic than to an 
Englishman. From conventional obligation to admire 
'"' our great epic poet " a foreigner is free. Nor has 
he any bias for or against Milton because he was a 
Puritan, — in his political and ecclesiastical doctrines 
to one of our great English parties a delight, to the 
other a bugbear. But a critic must have the requisite 
knowledge of the man and the works he is to judge ; 
and from a foreigner — particularly perhaps from a 
Frenchman — one hardly expects such knowledge. 
M. Edmond Scherer, however, whose essay on Milton 
lies before me, is an exceptional Frenchman. He is 
a senator of France and one of the directors of the 
Temps newspaper. But he was trained at Geneva, 
that home of large instruction and lucid intelligence. 
He was in youth the friend and hearer of Alexandre 
Yinet, — one of the most salutary influences a man in 
our times can have experienced, whether he continue 
to think quite with Vinet or not. He knows thoroughly 
the language and literature of England, Italy, Germany, 
as well as of France. Well-informed, intelligent, dis- 
interested, open-minded, sympathetic, M. Scherer has 
much in common with the admirable critic whom 
France has lost — Sainte-Beuve. What he has not, 
as a critic, is Sainte-Beuve's elasticity and cheerfulness. 
He has not that gaiety, that radiancy, as of a man 
discharging with delight the very office for which he 
was born, which, in the Caiiseries, make Sainte-Beuve's 
touch so felicitous, his sentences so crisp, his effect so 
charming. But M. Scherer has the same open-minded- 
ness as Sainte-Beuve, the same firmness and sureness 
of judgment ; and having a much more solid acquaint- 
ance with foreign languages than Sainte-Beuve, he 
can much better appreciate a work like Paradise Lost 
in the only form in which it can be appreciated properly 
— in the original. 



VII.] A FRENCH CRITIC ON MILTON. 191 

We will commence, however, by disagreeing with 
M. Scherer. He sees very clearly how vain is Lord 
Macaulay's sheer laudation of Milton, or Voltaire's 
sheer disparagement of him. Such judgments, M. 
Scherer truly says, are not judgments at all. They 
merely express a personal sensation of like or dislike. 
And M. Scherer goes on to recommend, in the place 
of such " personal sensations," the method of historical 
criticism — that great and famous power in the present 
day. He sings the praises of " this method at once 
more conclusive and more equitable, which sets itself 
to understand things rather than to class them, to 
explain rather than to judge them ; which seeks to 
account for a work from the genius of its author, and 
for the turn which this genius has taken from the 
circumstances amidst which it was developed ;" — the 
old story of "the man and the milieu,'' in short. " For 
thus," M. Scherer continues, " out of these two things 
the analysis of the writer's character and the study of 
his age, there spontaneously issues the right under- 
standing of his work. In place of an appreciation 
thrown off by some chance comer, we have the work 
passing judgment, so to speak, upon itself, and assum- 
ing the rank which belongs to it among the productions 
of the human mind." 

The advice to study the character of an author ' 
and the circumstances in which he has lived, in 
order to account to oneself for his work, is excellent. | 
But it is a perilous doctrine, that from such a study 
the right understanding of his work will " spontane- 
ously issue." In a mind qualified in a certain manner 
it will — not in all minds. And it will be that mind's 
' ' personal sensation." It cannot be said that Macaulay 
had not studied the character of Milton, and the his- 
tory of the times in which he lived. But a right 
understanding of Milton did not " spontaneously 



192 MIXED ESSAYS. [vii. 

issue " therefrom in the mind of Macaulay, because 
Macaulay's mind was that of a rhetorician, not of 
a disinterested critic. Let us not confound the 
method with the result intended by the method — 
right judgments. The critic who rightly appreciates 
a great man or a great work, and who can tell us 
faithfully — life being short, and art long, and false 
information very plentiful — what we may expect 
from their study and what they can do for us ; he 
is the critic we want, by whatever methods, intuitive 
or historical, he may have managed to get his know- 
ledge. 

M. Scherer begins with Milton's prose works, 
from which he translates many passages. Milton's 
sentences can hardly know themselves again in clear 
modern French, and with all their reversions and 
redundancies gone. M. Scherer does full justice to 
the glow and mighty eloquence with which Milton's 
prose, in its good moments, is instinct and alive ; to 
the " magnificences of his style," as he calls ^em : — 

"The expression is not too strong. There are moments 
when, shaking from him the dust of his arguments, the poet 
bursts suddenly forth, and bears us away in a torrent of incom- 
parable eloquence. "VVe get, not the phrase of the orator, but 
the glow of the poet, a flood of images poured around his arid 
theme, a rushing flight carrying us above his paltry contro- 
versies. The polemical writings of Milton are filled with 
such beauties. The prayer which concludes the treatise on 
Reformation in England, the praise of zeal in the Apology for 
Smectymnus, the portrait of Cromwell in the Second Defence 
of the English people, and, finally, the whole tract on the 
Liberty of Unlicensed Printing from beginning to end, are 
some of the most memorable pages in English literature, and 
some of the most characteristic products of the genius of 
Milton." 

Macaulay himself could hardly praise the eloquence 



VII.] A FKENCH CRITIC ON MILTON. 193 

of Milton's prose writings more warmly. But it is a 
very inadequate criticism which leaves the reader, as 
Macaulay's rhetoric would leave him, with the belief 
that the total impression to be got from Milton's 
prose writings is one of enjoyment and admiration. 
It is not j we are misled, and our time is wasted, if 
we are sent to Milton's prose works in the expecta- 
tion of finding it so. Grand thoughts and beautiful 
language do not form the staple of Milton's contro- 
versial treatises, though they occur in them not 
unfrequently. But the total impression from those 
treatises is rightly given by M. Scherer : — 

" In aU of them the manner is the same. The author brings 
into play the treasures of his learning, heaping together testi- 
monies from Scripture, passages from the Fathers, quotations 
from the poets ; laying all antiquity, sacred and profane, under 
contribution ; entering into subtle discussions on the sense of 
this or that Greek or Hebrew word. But not only by his 
undigested erudition and by his absorption in religious contro- 
versy does Milton belong to his age ; he belongs to it, too, by 
the personal tone of his polemics. Morus and Salmasius had 
attacked his morals, laughed at his low stature, made unfeeling 
allusions to his loss of sight : Milton replies by reproaching 
them with the wages they have taken and with the servant- 
girls they have debauched. All this mixed with coarse witti- 
cisms, with terms of the lowest abuse. Luther and Calvin, 
those virtuosos of insult, had not gone further." 

No doubt there is, as M. Scherer says, " something 
indescribably heroical and magnificent which over- 
flows from Milton, even when he is engaged in the 
most miserable discussions." Still, for the mass of 
his prose treatises " miserable discussions " is the 
final and right word. Nor, when Milton passed to 
his great epic, did he altogether leave the old man 
of these " miserable discussions " behind him. 

*' In his soul he is a polemist and theologian — a Protestant 
VOL. IV. 



194 MIXED ESSAYS. [vn. 

Schoolman. He takes delight in the favourite dogmas of 
Puritanism: original sin, predestination, free-will. Not that 
even here he does not display somewhat of that independence 
which was in his nature. But his theology is, nevertheless, 
that of his epoch, tied and bound to the letter of Holy Writ, 
without grandeur, without horizons, without philosophy. He 
never frees himself from the bondage of the letter. He settles 
the most important questions by the authority of an obscure 
text, or a text isolated from its context. In a word, Milton 
is a great poet with a Salamasius or a Grotius bound up along 
with him ; a genius nourished on the marrow of lions, of 
Homer, Isaiah, Yirgil, Dante, but also, like the serpent of 
Eden, eating dust, the dust of dismal polemics. He is a 
doctor, a preacher, a man of didactics ; and when the day shall 
arrive when he can at last realise the dreams of his youth and 
bestow on his country an epic poem, he will compose it of two 
elements, gold and clay, sublimity and scholasticism, and will 
bequeath to us a poem which is at once the most wonderful 
and the most insupportable poem in existence. " 

From the first, two conflicting forces, two sources 
of inspiration, had contended with one another, says 
M. Scherer, for the possession of Milton, — the Eenas- 
cence and Puritanism. Milton felt the power of 
both :— 

"Elegant poet and passionate disputant, accomplished 
humanist and narrow sectary, admirer of Petrarch, of Shak- 
speare, and hair-splitting interpreter of Bible -texts, smitten 
with Pagan antiquity and smitten with the Hebrew genius ; 
and all this at once, without effort, naturally; — an historical 
problem, a literary enigma ! " 

Milton's early poems, such as the Allegro^ the 
PenserosOj are poems produced while a sort of equi- 
librium still prevailed in the poet's nature ; hence 
their charm, and that of their youthful author : — 

"Nothing morose or repellent, purity without excess of 
rigour, gravity without fanaticism. Something wholesome and 



VII.] A FEENCH CEITIC ON MILTON. 195 

virginal, gi'acious and yet strong. A son of tlie North who 
has passed the way of Italy ; a last fruit of the Renascence, 
but a fruit filled -vsith a savour new and strange ! " 

But Milton's days proceeded, and he arrived at 
the latter years of his life — a life which, in its out- 
ward fortunes, darkened more and more, alia s'assom- 
hrissant de plus en plus, towards its close. He arrived 
at the time when "his friends had disappeared, his 
dreams had vanished, his eyesight was quenched, the 
hand of old age was upon him." It was then that, 
" isolated by the very force of his genius," but full of 
faith and fervour, he "turned his eyes towards the 
celestial light " and produced Paradise Lost. In its 
form, M. Scherer observes, in its plan and distribu- 
tion, the poem follows Greek and Eoman models, 
particularly the JEneid. " All in this respect is 
regular and classical; in this fidelity to the estab- 
lished models we recognise the literary superstitions 
of the Eenascence." So far as its form is concerned, 
Paradise Lost is, says M. Scherer, "the copy of a 
copy, a tertiary formation. It is to the Latin epics 
what these are to Homer." 

The most important matter, however, is the con- 
tents of the poem, not the form. The contents are 
given by Puritanism. But let M. Scherer speak for 
himself : — 

"Paradise Lost is an epic, but a theological epic ; and the 

theology of the poem is made up of the favourite dogmas of 

the Puritans, — the Fall, justification, God's sovereign decrees. 

Milton, for that matter, avows openly that he has a thesis to 

maintain ; his object is, he tells us at the outset, to ' assert 

Eternal Providence and justify the ways of God to man.' 

I Paradise Lost, then, is two distinct things in one, — an epic 

j! and a theodicy. Unfortunately these two elements, which 

I correspond to the two men of whom Milton was composed, and 

I to the two tendencies which ruled his century, these two 



196 MIXED ESSAYS. [vil. 

elements have not managed to get amalgamated. Far from 
doing so, they clash with one another, and from their juxta- 
position there results a suppressed contradiction which extends 
to the whole work, impairs its solidity, and compromises its 
value.' 

M. Scherer gives his reasons for thinking that the 
Christian theology is unmanageable in an epic poem, 
although the gods may come in very well in the 
Eiad and JEneid. Few will differ from him here, so 
we pass on. A theological poem is a mistake, says 
M. Sclierer ; but to call Paradise Lost a theological 
poem is to call it by too large a name. It is really 
a commentary on a biblical text, — the first two 
or three chapters of Genesis. Its subject, therefore, 
is a story, taken literally, which many of even the 
most religious people nowadays hesitate to take 
literally ; while yet, upon our being able to take it 
literally, the whole real interest of the poem for us 
depends. Merely as matter of poetry, the story of the 
Fall has no special force or effectiveness ; its effective- 
ness for us comes, and can only come, from our tak- 
ing it all as the literal narrative of what positively 
happened. 

Milton, M. Scherer thinks, was not strong in in- 
vention. The famous allegory of Sin and Death may 
be taken as a specimen of what he could do in this 
line, and the allegory of Sin and Death is uncouth 
and unpleasing. But invention is dangerous when 
one is dealing with a subject so grave, so strictly 
formulated by theology, as the subject of Milton's 
choice. Our poet felt this, and allowed little scope 
to free poetical invention. He adhered in general to 
data furnished by Scripture, and supplemented some- 
what by Jewish legend. But this judicious self- 
imitation had, again, its drawbacks : — 

* * If Milton has avoided factitious inventions, he has done so 



VII.] A FRENCH CEITIC ON MILTON. 197 

at the price of another disadvantage ; the bareness of his story, 
the epic poverty of his poem. It is not merely that the reader 
is carried up into the sphere of religious abstractions, where 
man loses power to see or breathe. Independently of this, 
everj'^thing is here too simple, both actors and actions. Strictly 
speaking, there is but one personage before us, God the Father ; 
inasmuch as God cannot appear without effacing every one else, 
nor speak without the accomplishment of his will. The Son is 
but the Father's double. The angels and archangels are but his 
messengers, nay, they are less ; they are but his decrees per- 
sonified, the supernumeraries of a drama which would be trans- 
acted quite as well without them. 

"Milton has struggled against these conditions of the subject 
which he had chosen. He has tried to escape from them, and 
has only made the drawback more visible. The long speeches 
%vith which he fills up the gaps of the action are sermons, and 
serve but to reveal the absence of action. Then as, after all, 
some action, some struggle, was necessary, the poet had recourse 
to the revolt of the angels. Unfortunately, such is the funda- 
mental vice of the subject, that the poet's instrument has, one 
may say, turned against him. "What his action has gained from 
it in movement it has lost in probability. We see a battle, 
indeed, but who can take either the combat or the combatants 
seriously ? Belial shows his sense of this, when in the infernal 
council he rejects the idea of engaging in any conflict whatever, 
open or secret, with Him who is All-seeing and Almighty ; and 
really one cannot comprehend how his mates should have failed 
to acquiesce in a consideration so evident. But, I repeat, the 
poem was not possible save at the price of this impossibility. 
Milton, therefore, has courageously made the best of it. He has 
gone -with it all lengths, he has accepted in all its extreme con- 
sequences the most inadmissible of fictions. He has exhibited 
to us Jehovah apprehensive for his omnipotence, in fear of seeing 
his position turned, his residence surprised, his throne usurped. 
He has drawn the angels hurling mountains at one another's 
heads, and firing cannon at one another. He has shown us the 
victory doubtful until the Son appears armed with lightnings, 
and standing on a car horsed by foui* Cherubim. " 

The fault of !Milton's poem is not, says M. Scherer, 



198 MIXED ESSAYS. [vii. 

that, with his Calvinism of the seventeenth century, 
Milton was a man holding other beliefs than ours. 
Homer, Dante, held other beliefs than ours : — 

"But Milton's position is not the same as theii's. Milton 
has something he wants to prove, he supports a thesis. It was 
his intention, in his poem, to do duty as theologian as well as 
poet ; at any rate, whether he meant it or not, Paradise Lost is 
a didactic work, and the form of it, therefore, cannot be sepa- 
rated from the substance. Now, it turns out that the idea of 
the poem will not bear examination ; that its solution for the 
problem of evil is almost burlesque ; that the character of its 
heroes, Jehovah and Satan, has no coherence ; that what 
happens to Adam interests us but little ; finally, that the action 
takes place in regions where the interests and passions of our 
common humanity can have no scope. I have already insisted 
on this contradiction in Milton's epic ; the story on which it 
turns can have meaning and value only so long as it preserves 
its dogmatic weight, and, at the same time, it cannot preserve 
this without falling into theology, — that is to say, into a domain 
foreign to that of art. The subject of the poem is nothing if it 
is not real, and if it does not touch us as the tui-ning-point of 
our destinies ; and the more the poet seeks to grasp this reality, 
the more it escapes from him." 

In short, the whole poem of Paradise Lost is 
vitiated, says M. Scherer, "by a kind of antinomy, 
by the conjoint necessity and impossibility of taking 
its contents literally." 

M. Scherer then proceeds to sum up. And in 
ending, after having once more marked his objections 
and accentuated them, he at last finds again that note 
of praise, which the reader will imagine him to have 
quite lost : — 

* * To sum up : Paradise Lost is a false poem, a grotesque 
poem, a tiresome poem ; there is not one reader out of a hundred 
who can read the ninth and tenth books without smiling, or the 
eleventh and twelfth without yawning. The whole thing is 
without solidity ; it is a pyramid resting on its apex, the most 



VII.] A FEENCH CRITIC ON MILTON. 199 

solemn of problems resolved by the most j)uerile of means. And, 
notwithstanding, Paradise Lost is immortal. It lives by a cer- 
tain number of episodes which are for ever famous. Unlike 
Dante, who must be read as a whole if we want really to seize 
his beauties, Milton ought to be read only by passages. But 
these passages form part of the poetical patrimony of the human 
race. " 

And not only in things like the address to light, 
or the speeches of Satan, is Milton admirable, but in 
single lines and images everywhere : — 

' ' Paradise Lost is studded with incomparable lines. Milton's 
poetry is, as it were, the very essence of poetry. The author 
seems to think always in images, and these images are grand 
and proud like his soul, a wonderful mixture of the sublime and 
the picturesque. For rendering things he has the unique word, 
the word which is a discovery. Every one knows his darkness 



M. Scherer cites other famous expressions and 
lines, so familiar that we need not quote them here. 
Expressions of the kind, he says, not only beautiful, 
but always, in addition to their beauty, striking one 
as the absolutely right thing {toujours justes dans leur 
heautd), are in Paradise Lost innumerable. And he 
concludes : — 

"Moreover, we have not said all when we have cited par- 
ticular lines of Milton. He has not only the image and the 
word, he has the period also, the large musical phrase, some- 
what long, somewhat laden with ornaments and intricate with 
inversions, but bearing all along with it in its superb undulation. 
Lastly, and above all, he has a something indescribably serene 
and victorious, an unfailing level of style, power indomitable. 
He seems to wrap us in a fold of his robe, and to carry us 
away with him into the eternal regions where is his home." 

With this fine image M. Scherer takes leave of 
Milton. Yet the simple description of the man in 
Johnson's life of him touches us more than any 



200 MIXED ESSAYS. [vii. 

image; the description of the old poet "seen in a 
small house, neatly enough dressed in black clothes, 
sitting in a room hung with rusty green, pale but not 
cadaverous, with chalk stones in his hands. He said 
that, if it were not for the gout his blindness would 
be tolerable." 

But in his last sentences M. Scherer comes upon 
what is undoubtedly Milton's true distinction as a 
poet, his "unfailing level of style." Milton has 
always the sure, strong touch of the master. His 
power both of diction and of rhythm is unsurpassable, 
and it is characterised by being always present— not 
depending on an access of emotion, not intermittent, 
but, like the grace of Raphael, working in its pos- 
sessor as a constant gift of nature. Milton's style, 
moreover, has the same propriety and soundness in 
presenting plain matters, as in the comparatively 
smooth task for a poet of presenting grand ones. 
His rhythm is as admirable where, as in the line — 

"And Tiresias and Pliineiis, prophets old " 

it is unusual, as in such lines as — 

"With di-eadful faces tkrong'd and fiery arms " 

where it is simplest. And what high praise this 
is, we may best appreciate by considering the ever- 
recurring failure, both in rhythm and in diction, 
which we find in the so-called Miltonic blank verse 
of Thomson, Cowper, Wordsworth. What leagues of 
lumbering movement ! what desperate endeavours, as 
in Wordsworth's 

" And at the ' Hoop ' alighted, famous inn," 

to render a platitude endurable by making it pompous ! 
Shakspeare himself, divine as are his gifts, has not, 
of the marks of the master, this one : perfect sureness 



yii.] A FEENCH CEITIC ON MILTON. 201 

of hand in his style. Alone of English poets, alone 
in English art, Milton has it ; he is our great artist 
in style, our one first-rate master in the grand style. 
He is as truly a master in this style as the great 
Greeks are, or Virgil, or Dante. The number of 
such masters is so limited that a man acquires a 
world-rank in poetry and art, instead of a mere local 
rank, by being counted among them. But Milton's 
importance to us Englishmen, by virtue of this dis- 
tinction of his, is incalculable. The charm of a 
master's unfailing touch in diction and in rhythm, no 
one, after all, can feel so intimately, so profoundly, 
as his own countrymen. Invention, plan, wit, pathos, 
thought, all of them are in great measure capable of 
being detached from the original work itself, and of 
being exported for admiration abroad. Diction and 
rhythm are not. Even when a foreigner can read 
the work in its own language, they are not, perhaps, 
easily appreciable by him. It shows M. Scherer's 
thorough knowledge of English, and his critical 
sagacity also, that he has felt the force of them in 
Milton. We natives must naturally feel it yet more 
powerfully. Be it remembered, too, that English 
literature, full of vigour and genius as it is, is 
peculiarly impaired by gropings and inadequacies in 
form. And the same with English art. Therefore 
for the English artist in any line, if he is a true 
artist, the study of Milton may well have an inde- 
scribable attraction. It gives him lessons which no- 
where else from an Englishman's work can he obtain, 
and feeds a sense which English work, in general, 
seems bent on disappointing and baffling. And this 
sense is yet so deep-seated in human nature, — this 
sense of style, — that probably not for artists alone, 
but for all intelligent Englishmen who read him, its 
gratification by Milton's poetry is a large though 



202 MIXED ESSAYS. [vii. 

often not fully recognised part of his charm, and a 
very wholesome and fruitful one. 

As a man, too, not less than as a poet, Milton has 
a side of unsurpassable grandeur. A master's touch 
is the gift of nature. Moral qualities, it is commonly 
thought, are in our own power. Perhaps the germs 
of such qualities are in their greater or less strength as 
much a part of our natural constitution as the sense 
for style. The range open to our own will and 
power, however, in developing and establishing them, 
is evidently much larger. Certain high moral dis- 
positions Milton had from nature, and he sedulously 
trained and developed them until they became habits 
of great power. 

Some moral qualities seem to be connected in a 
man with his power of style. Milton's power of 
style, for instance, has for its great character elevation; 
and Milton's elevation clearly comes, in the main, 
from a moral quality in him, — his pureness. " By 
pureness, by kindness ! " says St. Paul. These two, 
pureness and kindness, are, in very truth, the two 
signal Christian virtues, the two mighty wings of 
Christianity, with which it winnowed and renewed, 
and still winnows and renews, the world. In kind- 
ness, and in all which that word conveys or suggests, 
Milton does not shine. He had the temper of his 
Puritan party. We often hear the boast, on behalf 
of the Puritans, that they produced " our great epic 
poet." Alas! one might not unjustly retort that 
they spoiled him. However, let Milton bear his own 
burden ; in his temper he had natural affinities with 
the Puritans. He has paid for it by limitations as 
a poet. But, on the other hand, how high, clear, 
and splendid is his pureness ; and how intimately 
does its might enter into the voice of his poetry ! 
We have quoted some ill-conditioned passages from 



VII.] A FKENCH CEITIC ON MILTON. 203 

his prose, let us quote from it a passage of another 
stamp : — 

"And long it was not after, -when I was confirmed in this 
opinion, that he, who would not be frustrate of his hope to 
write well hereafter in laudable things, ought himself to be a 
true poem ; that is, a composition and pattern of the best and 
honourablest things ; not presuming to sing high praises of 
heroic men, or famous cities, unless he have in himself the 
experience and the practice of all that which is praiseworthy. 
These reasonings, together with a certain niceness of nature, an 
honest haughtiness and self-esteem, either of what I was or 
what I might be (which let envy call pride), and lastly that 
modesty whereof here I may be excused to make some beseeming 
profession ; aU these uniting the supply of their natural aid 
together kept me stiU above low descents of mind. Next (for 
hear me out now, readers), that I may tell you whither my 
younger feet wandered ; I betook me among those lofty fables 
and romances which recount in solemn cantos the deeds of 
knighthood founded by our victorious kings, and from hence 
had in renown over all Christendom. There I read it in the 
oath of every knight, that he should defend to the expense of 
his best blood, or of his life if it so befell him, the honour and 
chastity of virgin or matron ; from whence even then I learnt 
what a noble virtue chastity sure must be, to the defence of 
which so many worthies by such a dear adventure of themselves 
had sworn. Only this my mind gave me, that every free and 
gentle spirit, without that oath, ought to be born a knight, nor 
needed to expect the gilt spur, or the laying of a sword upon 
his shoulder, to stir him up both by his counsel and his arm to 
secure and protect the weakness of any attempted chastity." 

Mere fine professions are in this department of 
morals more common and more worthless than in 
any other. What gives to Milton's professions such 
a stamp of their own is their accent of absolute 
sincerity. In this elevated strain of moral pureness 
his life was really pitched ; its strong, immortal 
beauty passed into the diction and rhythm of his 
poetry. 



204 MIXED ESSAYS. [vii. 

But I did not propose to write a criticism of my 
own upon Milton. I proposed to recite and compare 
the criticisms on him by others. Only one is tempted, 
after our many extracts from M. Scherer, in whose 
criticism of Milton the note of blame fills so much 
more place than the note of praise, to accentuate this 
note of praise, which M. Scherer touches indeed with 
justness, but hardly perhaps draws out fully enough 
or presses firmly enough. As a poet and as a man, 
Milton has a side of grandeur so high and rare, as to 
give him rank along with the half-dozen greatest 
poets who have ever lived, although to their master- 
pieces his Paradise Lost is, in the fulfilment of the 
complete range of conditions which a great poem 
ought to satisfy, indubitably inferior. 

Nothing is gained by huddling on ** our great epic 
poet," in a promiscuous heap, every sort of praise. 
Sooner or later the question : How does Milton's 
masterpiece really stand to us moderns, what are we 
to think of it, what can we get from it ^ must in- 
evitably be asked and answered. We have marked 
that side of the answer which is and will always 
remain favourable to Milton. The unfavourable side 
of the answer is supplied by M. Scherer. " Paradise 
Lost lives ; but none the less is it true that its funda- 
mental conceptions have become foreign to us, and 
that if the work subsists it is in spite of the subject 
treated by it." 

The verdict seems just, and it is supported by M. 
Scherer with considerations natural, lucid, and forcible. 
He, too, has his conventions when he comes to speak 
of Eacine and Lamar tine. But his judgments on 
foreign poets, on Shakspeare, Byron, Goethe, as well 
as on Milton, seem to me to be singularly uninfluenced 
by the conventional estimates of these poets, and 
singularly rational. Leaning to the side of severity, 



VII.] A FRENCH CRITIC ON MILTON. 205 

as is natural when one has been wearied by choruses 
of ecstatic and exaggerated praise, he yet well and 
fairly reports, I think, the real impression made by 
these great men and their works on a modern mind 
disinterested, intelligent, and sincere. The English 
reader, I hope, may have been interested in seeing 
how Milton and his Paradise Lost stand such a survey. 
And those who are dissatisfied with what has been 
thus given them may always revenge themselves by 
falling back upon their Addison, and by observing 
sarcastically that " a few general rules extracted out 
of the French authors, with a certain cant of words, 
has sometimes set up an illiterate heavy writer for a 
most judicious and formidable critic." 



VIII. 

A FKEISrCH CEITIC ON GOETHE. 

It takes a long time to ascertain the true rank of a 
famous writer. A young friend of Joseph de Maistre, 
a M. de Syon, writing in praise of the literature of 
the nineteenth century as compared with that of the 
eighteenth, said of Chateaubriand, that " the Eternal 
created Chateaubriand to be a guide to the universe." 
Upon which judgment Joseph de Maistre comments 
thus : " Clear it is, my good young man, that you 
are only eighteen ; let us hear what you have to say 
at forty." " On wit lien, excellent jeune homme^ que 
vous avez dixhuit ans ; je vous attends ^ quarante." 

The same Joseph de Maistre has given an amusing 
history of the rise of our own Milton's reputation : — 

"No one had any suspicion of Milton's merits, when one day 
Addison took the speaking-trumpet of Great Britain (the instru- 
ment of loudest sound in the universe), and called from the top 
of the Tower of London : * Roman and Greek authors, give 
place ! ' 

"He did well to take this tone. If he had spoken modestly, 
if he had simply said that there .were great beauties in Paradise 
Lost, he would not have produced the slightest impression. 
But this trenchant sentence, dethroning Homer and Virgil, 
struck the English exceedingly. They said one to the other : 
' What, we possessed the finest epic poem in the world, and no 
one suspected it ! What a thing is inattention ! But now, at 



VIII.] A FRENCH CRITIC ON GOETHE. 207 

any rate, we have had our eyes opened. ' In fact, the reputation 
of Milton has become a national property, a portion of the 
Establishment, a Fortieth Article ; and the English would as 
soon think of giving up Jamaica as of giving up the pre-eminence 
of their great poet." 

Joseph de Maistre goes on to quote a passage from 
a then recent English commentator on Milton, — 
Bishop Newton. Bishop Newton, it seems, declared 
that " every man of taste and genius must admit 
Paradise Lost to be the most excellent of modern 
productions, as the Bible is the most perfect of the 
productions of antiquity." In a note M. de Maistre 
adds:. "This judgment of the good bishop appears 
unspeakably ridiculous." 

Ridiculous, indeed ! but a page or two later we 
shall find the clear-sighted critic himself almost as 
far astray as his "good bishop" or as his "good 
young man " : — 

''The strange thing is that the English, who are thorough 
Greek scholars, are willing enough to admit the superiority of 
the Greek tragedians over Shakspeare ; but when they come to 
Racine, who is in reality simply a Greek speaking French, their 
standard of beauty all of a sudden changes, and Racine, who is 
at least the equal of the Greeks, has to take rank far below 
Shakspeare, who is inferior to them. This theorem in trigono- 
metry presents no difficulties to the people of soundest under- 
standing in Europe. " 

So dense is the cloud of error here that the lover 
of truth and daylight will hardly even essay to 
dissipate it : he does not know where to begin. It 
is as when M. Victor Hugo gives his list of the 
sovereigns on the world's roll of creators and poets : 
" Homer, ^schylus, Sophocles, Lucretius, Virgil, 
Horace, Dante, Shakspeare, Rabelais, Molihre, Corneille, 
Voltaire." His French audience rise and cry enthusi- 
astically : " And Victor Hugo ! " And really that is 



208 MIXED ESSAYS. [viii. 

perhaps the best criticism on what he has been 
saying to them. 

Goethe, the great poet of Germany, has been 
placed by his own countrymen now low, now high ; 
and his right poetical rank they have certainly not 
yet succeeded in finding. Tieck, in his introduction 
to the collected writings of Lenz, noticing Goethe's 
remark on Byron's Manfred, — that Byron had 
*' assimilated Faust, and sucked out of it the strangest 
nutriment to his hypochondria," — says tartly that 
Byron, when he himself talked about his obligations 
to Goethe, was merely using the language of com- 
pliment, and would have been highly offended if any 
one else had professed to discover them. And Tieck 
proceeds : — 

"Every thing whicli in the Englishman's poems might remind 
one of Faust, is in my opinion far above Faust; and the English- 
man's feeling, and his incomparably more beautiful diction, are 
so entirely his oWn, that I cannot possibly believe him to have 
laai,di Faust for his model. " 

But then there comes a scion of the excellent 
stock of the Grimms, a Professor Hermann Grimm, 
and lectures on Goethe at Berlin, now that the 
Germans have conquered the French, and are the 
first military power in the world, and have become a 
great nation, and require a national poet to match ; 
and Professor Grimm says of Faust, of which Tieck 
had spoken so coldly: "The career of this, the 
greatest work of the greatest poet of all times and of 
all peoples, has but just begun, and we have been 
making only the first attempts at drawing forth its 
contents." 

If this is but the first letting out of the waters, 
the coming times may, indeed, expect a deluge. 

Many and diverse must be the judgments passed 



VIII.] A FEENCH CRITIC ON GOETHE. 209 

upon every great poet, upon every considerable 
writer. There is the judgment of enthusiasm and 
admiration, which proceeds from ardent youth, easily 
fired, eager to find a hero and to worship him. 
There is the judgment of gratitude and sympathy, 
which proceeds from those who find in an author 
what helps them, what they want, and who rate him 
at a very high value accordingly. There is the 
judgment of ignorance, the judgment of incompatibility, 
the judgment of envy and jealousy. Finally, there 
is the systematic judgment, and this judgment is the 
most worthless of all. The sharp scrutiny of envy 
and jealousy may bring real faults to light. The 
judgments of incompatibility and ignorance are 
instructive, whether they reveal necessary clefts of 
separation between the experiences of diff'erent sorts 
of people, or reveal simply the narrowness and 
bounded view of those who judge. But the system- 
atic judgment is altogether unprofitable. Its author 
has not really his eye upon the professed object of 
his criticism at all, but upon something else which he 
wants to prove by means of that object. He neither 
really tells us, therefore, anything about the object, 
nor anything about his own ignorance of the object. 
He never fairly looks at it, he is looking at something 
else. Perhaps if he looked at it straight and full, 
looked at it simply, he might be able to pass a good 
judgment on it. As it is, all he tells us is that he is no 
genuine critic, but a man with a system, an advocate. 

Here is the fault of Professor Hermann Grimm, and 
of his Berlin lectures on Goethe. The professor is a 
man with a system ; the lectures are a piece of advo- 
cacy. Professor Grimm is not looking straight at 
"the greatest poet of all times and of all peoples ;" 
he is looking at the necessities, as to literary glory 
of the new German empire. 

VOL. IV. p 



210 MIXED ESSAYS. [viii. 

But the definitive judgment on this great Goethe, 
the judgment of mature reason, the judgment which 
shall come " at forty years of age," who may give it 
to us ? Yet how desirable to have it ! It is a mis- 
take to think that the judgment of mature reason on 
our favourite author even if it abates considerably 
our high-raised estimate of him, is not a gain to us. 
Admiration is positive, say some people, disparage- 
ment is negative ; from what is negative we can get 
nothing. But is it no advantage, then, to the youthful 
enthusiast for Chateaubriand, to come to know that 
" the Eternal did not create Chateaubriand to be a 
guide to the universe " % It is a very great advantage, 
because these over-charged admirations are always 
exclusive, and prevent us from giving heed to other 
things which deserve admiration. Admiration is 
salutary and formative, true ; but things admirable 
are sown wide, and are to be gathered here and 
gathered there, not all in one place ; and until we 
have gathered them wherever they are to be found, 
we have not known the true salutariness and for- 
mativeness of admiration. The quest is large ; and 
occupation with the unsound or half sound, delight 
in the not good or less good, is a sore let and 
hindrance to us. Eelease from such occupation and 
delight sets us free for ranging farther, and for 
perfecting our sense of beauty. He is the happy 
man, who, encumbering himself with the love of 
nothing which is not beautiful, is able to embrace the 
greatest number of things beautiful in his love. 

I have already spoken of the judgment of a French 
critic, M. Scherer, upon Milton. I propose now to 
draw attention to the judgment of the same critic 
upon Goethe. To set to work to discuss Goethe 
thoroughly, so as to arrive at the true definitive judg- 
ment respecting him, seems to me a most formid- 



VIII.] A FRENCH CEITIC ON GOETHE. 211 

able enterprise. Certainly one should not think of 
attempting it within the limits of a single review- 
article. M. Scherer has devoted to Goethe not one 
article, but a series of articles. I do not say that 
the adequate, definitive judgment on Goethe is to 
be found in these articles of M. Scherer. But 1 
think they afford a valuable contribution towards it. 
M. Scherer is well-informed, clear-sighted, impartial. 
He is not warped by injustice and ill-will towards 
Germany, although the war has undoubtedly left him 
with a feeling of soreness. He is candid and cool, 
perhaps a little cold. Certainly he will not tell us 
that " the Eternal created Goethe to be a guide to 
the universe." He is free from all heat of youthful 
enthusiasm, from the absorption of a discoverer in his 
new discovery, from the subjugation of a disciple by 
the master who has helped and guided him. He is 
not a man with a system. And his point of view is 
in many respects that of an Englishman. We mean 
that he has the same instinctive sense rebelling 
against what is verbose, ponderous, roundabout, 
inane, — in one word, niais or silly, — in German 
literature, just as a plain Englishman has. 

This ground of sympathy between Englishmen 
and Frenchmen has not been enough remarked, but 
it is a very real one. They owe it to their having 
alike had a long -continued national life, a long- 
continued literary activity, such as no other modern 
nation has had. This course of practical experience 
does of itself beget a turn for directness and clearness 
of speech, a dislike for futility and fumbling, such as 
■without it we shall rarely find general. Dr. Wiese, 
in his recent useful work on English schools, expresses 
surprise that the French language and literature 
should find more favour in Teutonic England than 
the German. But community of practice is more 



212 MIXED ESSAYS. [viil 

telling than community of origin. While English 
and French are printed alike, and while an English 
and a French sentence each of them says what it has 
to say in the same plain fashion, a German newspaper 
is still printed in black letter, and a German sentence 
is framed in the style of this which we quote from 
Dr. Wiese himself: "Die Englander einer grossen, 
in alien Erdtheilen eine Achtung gebietende Stellung 
einnehmenden Nation angehoren ! " The Italians are 
a Latin race, with a clear-cut language ; but much of 
their modern prose has all the circuitousness and 
slowness of the German, and from the same cause : 
the want of the pressure of a great national life, with 
its practical discipline, its ever-active traditions ; its 
literature, for centuries past, powerful and incessant. 
England has these in common with France. 

M. Scherer's point of view, then, in judging the 
productions of German literature, will naturally, I 
repeat, coincide in several important respects with 
that of an Englishman. His mind will make many 
of the same instinctive demands as ours, will feel 
many of the same instinctive repugnances. We shall 
gladly follow him, therefore, through his criticism of 
Goethe's works. As far as possible he shall be 
allowed to speak for himself, as he was when we 
were dealing with his criticism on Milton. But as 
then, too, I shall occasionally compare M. Scherer's 
criticism on his author with the criticism of others. 
And I shall by no means attempt, on the present 
opportunity, a substantive criticism of my own, 
although I may from time to time allow myself to 
comment, in passing, upon the judgments of M. 
Scherer. 

We need not follow M. Scherer in his sketch of 
Goethe's life. It is enough to remember that the 



VIII.] A FRENCH CRITIC OX GOETHE. 213 

main dates in Goethe's life are, his birth in 1749 ; his 
going to Weimar with the Grand Duke, Carl-August, 
in 1775 ; his stay in Italy from September 1786 to 
June 1788; his return in 1788 to Weimar; a severe 
and nearly fatal illness in 1801 ; the loss of Schiller 
in 1805, of Carl- August in 1828; his own death in 
1832. ^Yith these dates fixed in our minds, we may 
come at once to the consideration of Goethe's works. 

The long list begins, as we all know, with Gotz 
von Berlichingen and JVerther. "We all remember how 
Mr. Carlyle, "the old man eloquent," who in his 
younger days, fifty years ago, betook himself to 
Goethe for light and help, and found what he sought, 
and declared his gratitude so powerfully and well, 
and did so much to make Goethe's name a name of 
might for other Englishmen also, a strong tower into 
which the doubter and the despairer might run and 
be safe, — we all remember how Mr. Carlyle has 
taught us to see in Gotz and in JVerther the double 
source from which have flowed those two mighty 
streams, — the literature of feudaHsm and romance, 
represented for us by Scott, and the literature of 
emotion and passion, represented for us by Byron. 

M. Scherer's tone throughout is, we have said, 
not that of the ardent and grateful admirer, but of 
the cool, somewhat cold critic. He by no manner of 
means resembles ^Ir. Carlyle. Already the cold tone 
appears in M. Scherer's way of dealing with Goethe's 
earhest productions. M. Scherer seems to me to 
rate the force and interest of Gotz too low. But his 
remarks on the derivedness of this supposed source 
are just. The Germans, he says, were bent, in their 
" Sturm und Drang " period, on throwing ofi" literary 
conventions, imitation of all sorts, and on being 
original. What they really did, was to fall from one 
sort of imitation, the imitation of the so-called 



214 MIXED ESSAYS. [viii. 

classical French literature of the seventeenth century, 
into another. 

" Gotz von BerlicMngen is a study composed after the drama- 
tised chronicles of Shakspeare, and Werther is a product yet 
more direct of the sensibility and declamation brought into 
fashion by Jean Jacques Rousseau. All in these works is 
infantine, both the aim at being original, and the way of 
setting about it. It is exactly as it was with us about 1830. 
One imagines one is conducting an insurrection, making oneself 
independent ; what one really does is to cook up out of 
season an old thing. Shakspeare had put the history of his 
nation upon the stage; Goethe goes for a subject to German 
history. Shakspeare, who was not fettered by the scenic 
conditions of the modern theatre, changed the place at every 
scene ; Gotz is cut up in the same fashion. I say nothing of the 
substance of the piece, of the absence of characters, of the 
nuUity of the hero, of the commonplace of Weislingen 'the 
inevitable traitor, ' of the melodramatic machinery of the secret 
tribunal. The style is no better. The astonishment is not 
that Goethe at twenty-five should have been equal to writing 
this piece ; the astonishment is that after so poor a start he 
should have subsequently gone so far. " 

M. Scherer seems to me quite unjust, I repeat, to 
this first dramatic work of Goethe. Mr. Hutton 
pronounces it "far the most noble as well as the 
most powerful of Goethe's dramas." And the merit 
which Mr. Hutton finds in Gotz is a real one ; it is 
the work where Goethe, young and ardent, has most 
forgotten himself in his characters. " There was 
something," says Mr. Hutton (and here he and M. 
Scherer are entirely in accord), "which prevented 
Goethe, we think, from ever becoming a great 
dramatist. He could never lose himself sufficiently 
in his creations." It is in Gotz that he loses himself 
in them the most. Gotz is full of faults, but there is 
a life and a power in it, and it is not dull. This 
is what distinguishes it from Schiller's Bobbers. The 



VIII.] A FRENCH CRITIC ON GOETHE. 215 

Bobbers is at once violent and tiresome. Gofz is 
violent, but it is not tiresome. 

JFerther, which appeared a year later than Gofz, 
finds more favour at M. Scherer's hands. JFerther 
is superior to Gotz, he says, " inasmuch as it is more 
modern, and is consequently alive, or, at any rate, 
has been alive lately. It has sincerity, passion, 
eloquence. One can still read it, and with emotion." 
But then come the objections : — 

"Nevertheless, and just by reason of its trutli at one par- 
ticular moment, Werthcr is gone by. It is with the book as 
with the blue coat and ^^ellow breeches of the hero ; the reader 
finds it hard to admit the pathetic in such accoutrement. 
There is too much enthusiasm for Ossian, too much absorption 
in nature, too many exclamations and apostrophes to beings 
animate and inanimate, too many torrents of tears. "Who can 
forbear smiling as he reads the scene of the storm, where 
Charlotte first casts her eyes on the fields, then on the sky, and 
finally, laying her hand on her lover's, utters this one word : 
Klopstock ! And then the cabbage-passage ! . . . Wertlier is 
the poem of the German middle-class sentimentality of that 
day. It must be said that om* sentimentality, even at the 
height of the Helo'ise season, never reached the extravagance of 
that of our neighbours . . . Mdlle. Flachsland, who married 
Herder, writes to her betrothed that one night in the depth of 
the woods she fell on her knees as she looked at the moon, and 
that having found some glow worms she put them into her 
hair, being careful to arrange them in couples that she might 
not disturb their loves. " 

One can imagine the pleasure of a victim of 
"Kruppism and corporalism " in relating that story 
of Mdlle. Flachsland. There is an even better story 
of the return of a Dr. Zimmermann to his home in 
Hanover, after being treated for hernia at Berlin ; 
but for this story I must send the reader to M. 
Scherer's own pages. 

After the publication of Werther began Goethe's 



216 MIXED ESSAYS. [viii. 

life at Weimar. For ten years he brought out 
nothing except occasional pieces for the Court theatre, 
and occasional poems. True, he carried the project 
of his Faust in his mind, he planned Wilhelm Meister, 
he made the first draft of JEgmonf, he wrote Iphigeneia 
and Tasso in prose. But he could not make the 
progress he wished. He felt the need, for his work, 
of some influence which Weimar could not give. 
He became dissatisfied with the place, with himself, 
with the people about him. In the autumn of 1786 
he disappeared from Weimar, almost by a secret 
flight, and crossed the Alps into Italy. M. Scherer 
says truly that this was the great event of his life. 

Italy, Eome above all, satisfied Goethe, filled him 
with a sense of strength and joy. "At Eome," he 
writes from that city, ''he who has eyes to see, 
and who uses them seriously, becomes solid. The 
spirit receives a stamp of vigour; it attains to a 
gravity in which there is nothing dry or harsh, — to 
calm, to joy. For my own part, at any rate, I feel 
that I have never before had the power to judge 
things so justly, and I congratulate myself on the 
happy result for my whole future life." So he wrote 
while he was in Eome. And he told the Chancellor 
von Miiller, twenty-five years later, that from the 
hour when he crossed the Ponte Molle on his return 
to Germany, he had never known a day's happiness. 
" While he spoke thus," adds the Chancellor, " his 
features betrayed his deep emotion." 

The Italy, from which Goethe thus drew satis- 
faction and strength, was Grseco-Eoman Italy, pagan 
Italy. For mediaeval and Christian Italy he had no 
heed, no sympathy. He would not even look at the 
famous church of St. Francis at Assisi. " I passed 
it by," he says, " in disgust." And he told a young 
Italian who asked him his opinion of Dante's great 



VIII.] A FEEXCH CRITIC OX GOETHE. 217 

poem, that he thought the Inferno abominable, the 
Purgatorio dubious, and the Pamdiso tiresome. 

I have not space to quote what M. Scherer says 
of the influence on Goethe's genius of his stay in 
Eome. We are more especially concerned Trith the 
judgments of M. Scherer on the principal works of 
Goethe as these works succeed one another. At 
Eome, or under the influence of Rome, Ijohigeneia 
and Tasso were recast in verse, Egmont was resumed 
and finished, the chief portion of the first part of 
Faust was written. Of the larger works of Goethe 
in poetry, these are the chief. Let us see what M. 
Scherer has to say of them. 

Tasso and Jphigeneia, says M. Scherer very truly, 
mark a new phase in the literary career of Goethe : — 

" They are works of finished style and profound composition. 
There is no need to inquire whether the Iphigeneia keeps to 
the traditional data of the subject ; Goethe desired to make it 
Greek only by its sententious elevation and grave beauty. 
What he imitates are the conditions of art as the ancients 
understood them, but he does not scruple to introduce new 
thoughts into these mythological motives. He has given up 
the aim of rendering by poetry what is characteristic or indi- 
vidual ; his concern is henceforth with the ideal, that is to say, 
with the transformation of things through beauty. If I were 
to employ the terms in use amongst ourselves, I should say 
that from romantic Goethe had changed to being classic ; but, 
let me say agaiu, he is classic only by the adoption of the 
elevated style, he imitates the ancients merely by borrowing 
their peculiar sentiment as to art, and withia these bounds he 
moves with freedom and power. The two elements, that of 
immediate or passionate feeling, and that of well-considered 
combination of means, balance one another, and give birth to 
finished works. Tasso and Iphigeneia mark the apogee of 
Goethe's talent." 

It is curiously interesting to turn from this praise 
of Tasso and Iphigeneia to that by the late Mr. Lewes, 



218 MIXED ESSAYS. [viii. 

whose Life of Goethe, a work in many respects of 
brilliant cleverness, will be in the memory of many 
of us. "A marvellous dramatic poem!" Mr. Lewes 
calls Iphigeneia. " Beautiful as the separate passages 
are, admirers seldom think of passages, they think of 
the wondrous whole." Of Tasso, Mr. Lewes says : 
" There is a calm, broad effulgence of light in it, very 
different from the concentrated lights of effect which 
we are accustomed to find in modern works. It has 
the clearness, unity, and matchless grace of a Eaphael, 
not the lustrous warmth of a Titian, or the crowded 
gorgeousness of a Paul Veronese." 

Every one will remark the difference of tone be- 
tween this criticism and M. Scherer's. Yet M. 
Scherer's criticism conveyed praise, and, for him, 
warm praise. Tasso and Iphigeneia mark, in his eyes, 
the period, the too short period, during which the 
forces of inspiration and of reflection, the poet in 
Goethe and the critic in him, the thinker and the 
artist, in whose conflict M. Scherer sees the history 
of our author's literary development, were in equi- 
librium. 

Faust also, the first part of Faust, the only one 
which counts, belongs by its composition to this 
Tasso period. By common consent it is the best of 
Goethe's works. For while it had the benefit of his 
matured powers of thought, of his command over his 
materials, of his mastery in planning and expressing, 
it possesses by the nature of its subject an intrinsic 
richness, colour, and warmth. Moreover, from Goethe's 
long and early occupation with the subject, Faust 
has preserved many a stroke and flash out of the 
days of its author's fervid youth. To M. Scherer, 
therefore, as to the world in general, the first part 
of Faust seems Goethe's masterpiece. M. Scherer 
does not call Faust the greatest work of the greatest 



VIII.] A FEENCH CRITIC ON GOETHE. 219 

poet of all times and all peoples, but thus he speaks 
ofit:— 

"Goethe had the good fortune early to come across a subject, 
which, while it did not lend itself to his faults, could not 
but call forth all the powers of his genius. I speak of Faust. 
Goethe had begun to occupy himself with it as early as 1774, 
the year in which Werther was published. Considerable por- 
tions of the First Part appeared in 1790 ; it was completed in 
1808. We may congratulate ourselves that the work was already, 
at the time of his travels in Italy, so far advanced as it was ; 
else there might have been danger of the author's turning away 
from it as from a Gothic, perhaps unhealthy, production. 
What is certain is, that he could not put into Faust his pre- 
occupation with the antique, or, at any rate, he was obliged to 
keep this for the Second Part. The first Faust remained, 
whether Goethe would or no, an old story made young again, to 
serve as the poem of thought, the poem of modern life. This 
kind of adaptation had evidently great difficulties. It was im- 
possible to give the story a satisfactory ending ; the compact 
between the Doctor and the Devil could not be made good, 
consequently the original condition of the story was gone, and 
the drama was left without an issue. We must, therefore, take 
Faust as a work which is not finished, and which could not be 
finished. But, in compensation, the choice of this subject had 
all sorts of advantages for Goethe. In place of the somewhat 
cold symbolism for which his mind had a turn, the subject of 
Faust compelled him to deal with popular beliefs. Instead of 
obliging him to produce a drama with beginning, middle, and 
end, it allowed him to proceed by episodes and detached scenes. 
Finally, in a subject fantastic and diabolic there could hardly 
be found room for the imitation of models. Let me add, that 
in bringing face to face human aspiration represented by Faust 
-and pitiless irony represented by Mephistopheles, Goethe found 
the natural scope for his keen observations on all things. It is 
unquestionable that Faust stands as one of the great works of 
poetry ; and, perhaps, the most wonderful work of poetry in 
our century. The story, the subject, do not exist as a whole, 
but each episode by itself is perfect, and the execution is no- 
where defective. Faust is a treasure of poetry, of pathos, of 



220 MIXED ESSAYS. [viii. 

the highest wisdom, of a spirit inexhaustible and keen as steel. 
There is not, from the first verse to the last, a false tone or a 
weak line." 

This praise is discriminating, and yet earnest, 
almost cordial. ^^ Faust stands as one of the great 
works of poetry ; and, perhaps, the most wonderful 
work of poetry in our century." The perhaps might 
be away. But the praise is otherwise not coldly 
stinted, not limited ungraciously and unduly. 

Goethe returned to " the formless Germany," to 
the Germanic north with its " cold wet summers," of 
which he so mournfully complained. He returned 
to Weimar with its petty Court and petty town, its 
society which Carl- August himself, writing to Knebel, 
calls "the most tiresome on the face of the earth," 
and of which the ennui drove Goethe sometimes to 
"a sort of internal despair." He had his animating 
friendship with Schiller. He had also his connection 
with Christiana Vulpius, whom he afterwards married. 
That connection both the moralist and the man of the 
world may unite in condemning. M. Scherer calls it 
" a degrading connection with a girl of no education, 
whom Goethe established in his house to the great 
embarrassment of all his friends, whom he either could 
not or would not marry until eighteen years later, 
and who punished him as he deserved by taking a 
turn for drink, — a turn which their unfortunate son 
inherited." In these circumstances was passed the 
second half of Goethe's life, after his return from 
Italy. The man of reflection, always present in him, 
but balanced for a while by the man of inspiration, 
became now, M. Scherer thinks, predominant. There 
was a refroidissement graduelj a gradual cooling down, 
of the poet and artist. 

The most famous works of Goethe which remain 
yet to be mentioned are Egmonf, Hermann and Doro- 



VIII.] A FEENCH CRITIC ON GOETHE. 221 

theay Wilhelm Meister, the Second Part of Faust, and 
the Gedichte, or short poems. Of Egmont M. Scherer 
says : — 

"This piece also belongs, by the date of its publication, to 
the period which followed Goethe's stay in Rome. But in vain 
did Goethe try to transform it, he could not succeed. The sub- 
ject stood in his way. We need not be surprised, therefore, if 
Egmont remains a mediocre performance, Goethe having always 
been deficient in dramatic faculty, and not in this case redeem- 
ing his defect by qualities of execution, as in IpJiigeneia. He 
is too much of a generaliser to create a character, too meditative 
to create an action. Egmont must be ranked by the side of 
Gotz; it is a product of the same order. The hero is not a 
living being ; one does not know what he wants ; the object of 
the conspiracy is not brought out. The unfortunate Count 
does certainly exclaim, as he goes to the scaffold, that he is 
dying for liberty, but nobody had suspected it until that moment. 
It is the same with the popular movement ; it is insufficiently 
rendered, without breadth, without power. I say nothing of 
Machiavel, who preaches toleration to the Princess Regent and 
tries to make her understand the uselessness of persecution ; nor 
of Claire, a girl sprung from the people, who talks like an epi- 
gi-am of the Anthology : ' Neither soldiers nor lovers should 
have their arms tied.' Egmont is one of the weakest among 
Goethe's weak pieces for the stage." 

But now, on the other hand, let us hear Mr. Lewes : 
" When all is said, the reader thinks of Egmont and 
Clarchen, and flings criticism to the winds. These 
are the figures which remain in the memory ; bright, 
genial, glorious creations, comparable to any to be 
found in the long galleries of art ! " What a difi'er- 
ent tone ! 

Aristotle says, with admirable common-sense, that 
the determination of how a thing really is, is cos av 6 
^povtjLtos 6pL(T€t€v, " as the judicious would determine." 
And would the judicious, after reading Egmont, deter- 
mine with Mr. Lewes, or determine with M. Scherer "{ 



222 MIXED ESSAYS. [viii. 

Let US for the present leave the judicious to try, and 
let us pass to M. Scherer's criticism of Hermann and 
Dorothea. "Goethe's epic poem," writes Schiller, 
" you have read ; you will admit that it is the pin- 
nacle of his and all our modern art." In Professor 
Grimm's eyes, perhaps, this is but scant praise, but 
how much too strong is it for M. Scherer ! 

" Criticism is considerably embarrassed in presence of a poem 
in many respects so bigbly finished as the antico-modern and 
heroico- middle -class idyll of Goethe. The ability which the 
author has spent upon it is beyond conception ; and, the kind 
of poem being once allowed, the indispensable concessions having 
been once made, it is certain that the pleasure is doubled by 
seeing, at each step, difficulty so marvellously overcome. But 
all this cannot make the effort to be effort well spent, nor the 
kind of poem a true, sound and worthy kind. Hermann and 
Dorothea remains a piece of elegant cleverness, a wager laid and 
won, but for all that, a feat of ingenuity and nothing more. It 
is not quite certain that our modern society will continue to 
have a poetry at all ; but most undoubtedly, if it does have one, 
it will be on condition that this poetry belongs to its time by 
its language, as well as by its subject. Has any critic remarked 
how Goethe's manner of proceeding is at bottom that of parody, 
and how the turn of a straw would set the reader laughing at 
these farm-horses transformed into coursers, these village inn- 
keepers and apothecaries who speak with the magniloquence of 
a Ulysses or a Nestor ? Criticism should have the courage to 
declare that all this is not sincere poetry at all, but solely the 
product of an exquisite dilettantism, and, — to speak the definite 
judgment upon it, — a factitious work." 

Once again we will turn to Mr. Lewes for con- 
trast : — 

" Do not let us discuss whether HerTnann and DorotTiea is or 
is not an epic. It is a poem. Let us accept it for what it is,— 
a poem full of life, character, and beauty ; of all idylls it is the 
most truly idyllic, of all poems describing country life and 
country people it is the mpst truthful. Shakspeare himself is 
not more dramatic in the presentation of character." 



VIII.] A FRENCH CRITIC ON GOETHE. 223 

It is an excellent and wholesome discipline for a 
student of Goethe to he hrought face to face with 
such opposite judgments concerning his chief produc- 
tions. It compels us to rouse ourselves out of the 
passiveness with which we in general read a cele- 
brated work, to open our eyes wide, to ask ourselves 
frankly how, according to our genuine feeling, the 
truth stands. We all recollect Mr. Carlyle on Wilhelm 
Meister, *'the mature product of the first genius of 
our times " : — 

" Anarchy has now become peace ; the once gloomy and per- 
turbed spirit is now serene, cheerfully vigorous, and rich in good 
fruits . . . The ideal has been built on the actual ; no longer 
floats vaguely in darkness and regions of di'eams, but rests in 
light, on the firm ground of human interest and business, as in 
its true scene, and on its true basis." 

Schiller, too, said of Wilhelm Meister, that he " ac- 
counted it the most fortunate incident in his existence 
to have lived to see the completion of this work." 
And again: "I cannot describe to you how deeply 
the truth, the beautiful vitality, the simple fulness of 
this work has affected me. The excitement into 
which it has thrown my mind will subside when I 
shall have thoroughly mastered it, and that will be 
an important crisis in my being." 

Now for the cold-water douche of our French 
critic : — 

"Goethe is extremely great, but he is extremely unequal. 
He is a genius of the fii'st order, but with thicknesses, with 
spots, so to speak, which remain opaque and where the light 
does not pass. Goethe, to go farther, has not only genius, he 
has what we in France call esprit, he has it to any extent, and 
yet there are in him sides of commonplace and silliness. One 
cannot read his works -^-ithout continually falling in with trivial 
admirations, solemn i)ieces of simplicity, reflections which bear 



224 MIXED ESSAYS. [viii. 

upon nothing. There are moments when Goethe turns upon 
society and upon art a ken of astonishing penetration ; and 
there are other moments when he gravely beats in an open door, 
or a door which leads nowhere. In addition, he has all manner 
of hidden intentions, he loves byways of effect, seeks to insinu- 
ate lessons, and so becomes heavy and fatiguing. There are 
works of his which one cannot read without effort. I shall 
never forget the repeated acts of self-sacrifice which it cost me 
to finish Wilhelm Meister and the Elective Affinities. As Paul 
de Saint-Yictor has put it : * when Goethe goes in for being 
tiresome he succeeds with an astonishing perfection, he is the 
Jupiter Pluvius of ennui. The very height from which he 
pours it down, does but make its weight greater.' What an 
insipid invention is the pedagogic city ! What a trivial world 
is that in which the Wilhelms and the Philinas, the Eduards 
and the Ottilias, have their being ! Mignon has been elevated 
into a poetic creation ; but Mignon has neither charm, nor 
mystery, nor veritable existence ; nor any other poetry belonging 
to her, — let us say it right out, — except the half-dozen immortal 
stanzas put into her mouth. " 

And, as we brought Schiller to corroborate the 
praise of Wilhelm Meister, let us bring Niebuhr to 
corroborate the blame. Niebuhr calls Wilhelm Meister 
"a menagerie of tame animals." 

After this the reader can perhaps imagine, Tvdthout 
any specimens of it, the sort of tone in which M. 
Scherer passes judgment upon Dichtung und Wahrheit, 
and upon Goethe's prose in general. Even Mr. Lewes 
declares of Goethe's prose : "He has written with a 
perfection no German ever achieved before, and he 
has also written with a feebleness which it would be 
gratifying to think no German would ever emulate 
again." 

Let us return, then, to Goethe's poetry. There is 
the continuation of Faust still to be mentioned. First 
we will hear Mr. Carlyle. In Helena " the design is," 
says Mr. Carlyle, " that the story of Faust may fade 



VIII.] A FRENCH CRITIC ON GOETHE. 225 

away at its termination into a phantasmagoric region, 
where symbol and thing signified are no longer clearly 
distinguished," and that thus " the final result may 
be curiously and significantly indicated rather than 
directly exhibited." Helena is "not a type of one 
thing, but a vague, fluctuating fitful adumbration of 
many." It is, properly speaking, " what the Germans 
call a Miihrchen, a species of fiction they have particu- 
larly excelled in." As to its composition, "we 
cannot but perceive it to be deeply studied, appro- 
priate and successful." 

The "adumbrative" style here praised, in which 
" the final result is curiously and significantly indi- 
cated rather than directly exhibited," is what M. 
Scherer calls Goethe's " last manner." 

" It was to be feared that, as Goethe grew older and colder, 
the balance between these two elements of art, science, and tem- 
perament, would not be preserved. This is just what happened, 
and hence arose Goethe's last manner. He had passed from 
representing characters to representing the ideal, he is now to 
pass from the ideal to the symbol. And this is quite intelli- 
gible ; reflection, as it develops, leads to abstraction, and from 
the moment when the artist begins to prefer ideas to sensation 
he falls inevitably into allegory, since allegory is his only means 
for directly expressing ideas. Goethe's third epoch is character- 
ised by three things : an ever-increasing devotion to the antique 
as to the supreme revelation of the beautiful, a disposition to 
take delight in oesthetic theories, and, finally, an irresistible 
desire for giving didactic intentions to art. This last tendency 
is evident in the continuation of WUhdm Meistcr, and in the 
second Faust. We may say that these two works are dead of a 
hypertrophy of reflection. They are a mere mass of symbols, 
hieroglyphics, sometimes even mystifications. There is some- 
thing extraordinarily painful in seeing a genius so vigorous and 
a science so consummate thus mistaking the elementary condi- 
tions of poetry. The fault, we may add, is the fault of German 
art in general. The Germans have more ideas than their plas- 
ticity of temperament, evidently below par, knows how to deal 

VOL. IV. Q 



226 MIXED ESSAYS. [viii. 

with. They are wanting in the vigorous sensuousness, the con- 
crete and immediate impression of things, which makes the 
artist, and which distinguishes him from the thinker. " 

So much for Goethe's " last manner " in general, 
and to serve as introduction to what M. Scherer has 
to say of the second Faust more particularly : — 

" The two parts of Faust are disparate. They do not proceed 
from one and the same conception. Goethe was like Defoe, 
like Milton, like so many others, who after producing a master- 
piece have been bent on giving it a successor. Unhappily, 
while the first Faust is of Goethe's fairest time, of his most 
vigorous manhood, the second is the last fruit of his old age. 
Science, in the one, has not chilled poetic genius ; in the other, 
reflection bears sway and produces all kind of symbols and 
abstractions. The beauty of the first comes in some sort from 
its very imperfection ; I mean, from the incessant tendency of 
the sentiment of reality, the creative power, the poetry of 
passion and nature, to prevail over the philosophic intention 
and to make us forget it. "Where is the student of poetry who, 
as he reads the monologues of Faust or the sarcasms of Mephis- 
topheles, as he witnesses the fall and the remorse of Margaret, 
the most poignant history ever traced by pen, any longer 
thinks of the Prologue in Heaven or of the terms of the compact 
struck between Faust and the Tempter ? In the second part it 
is just the contrary. The idea is everything. Allegory reigns 
there. The poetry is devoid of that simple and natural realism 
without which art cannot exist. One feels oneself in a sheer 
region of didactics. And this is true even of the finest parts, — 
of the third act, for example, -—as well as of the weakest. What 
can be more burlesque than this Euphorion, son of F^ust and 
Helen, who is found at the critical moment under a cabbage- 
leaf ! — no, I am wrong, who descends from the sky 'for all the 
world like a Phoebus,' with a little cloak and a little harp, and 
ends by breaking his neck as he falls at the feet of his parents ? 
And all this to represent Lord Byron, and, in his person, 
modern poetry, which is the offspring of romantic art ! What 
decadence, good heavens ! and what a melancholy thing is old 
age, since it can make the most plastic of modern poets sink 
down to these fantasticalities worthy of Alexandria ! " 



VIII.] A FRENCH CRITIC ON GOETHE. 227 

In spite of the high praise which he has accorded 
to Tasso and I^phigeneia, M. Scherer concludes, then, 
his review of Goethe's productions thus : — 

" Goethe is truly original and thoroughly superior only in his 
lyrical poems (the Gediclite), and in the first part of Faust. 
They are immortal works, and why ? Because they issue from 
a personal feeling, and the spirit of system has not petrified 
them. And yet even his lyrical poems Goethe has tried to 
spoil. He went on correcting them incessantly ; and, in 
bringing them to that degree of perfection in which we now 
find them, he has taken out of them their warmth." 

The worshipper of Goethe will ask with wrath and 
bitterness of soul whether M. Scherer has yet done. 
Not quite. We have still to hear some acute 
remarks on the pomposity of diction in our poet's 
stage pieces. The English reader will best under- 
stand, perhaps, the kind of fault meant, if we quote 
from the Natural Daughter a couple of lines not 
quoted, as it happens, by M. Scherer. The heroine 
has a fall from her horse, and the Court physician 
comes to attend her. The Court physician is 
addressed thus : — 

"Erfahrner Mann, dem unseres Konig's Leben, 
Das unschatzbare Gut, vertrautist ..." 

" Experienced man, to whom the life of our sovereign, 
that inestimable treasure, is given in charge." Shak- 
speare would have said Doctor. The German drama 
is full of this sort of roundabout, pompous language. 
"Every one has laughed," says M. Scherer, "at the 
pomposity and periphrasis of French tragedy." The 
heroic King of Pontus, in French tragedy, gives up 
the ghost with these words : — 

* ' Dans cet embrassement dont la douceur me flatte, 
Venez, et recevez I'ame de Mithridate." 



228 MIXED ESSAYS. [viii. 

"What has not been said," continues M. Scherer, 
"and justly said, against the artificial character of 
French tragedy?" Nevertheless, "people do not 
enough remember that, convention being universally 
admitted in the seventeenth century, sincerity and 
even a relative simplicity remained possible" with 
an artificial diction ; whereas Goethe did not find his 
artificial diction imposed upon him by conditions 
from without, — he made it himself, and of set 
purpose. 

" It is a curious thing ; this style of Goethe's has its cause 
just in that very same study which has been made such a 
matter of reproach against our tragedy- writers,- — the study to 
maintain a pitch of general nobleness in all the language 
uttered. Everything with Goethe must be grave, solemn, 
sculptural. We see the influence of Winckelmann, and of his 
views on Greek art." 

Of Goethe's character, too, as well as of his talent, 
M. Scherer has something to say. English readers 
will be familiar enough with complaints of Goethe's 
" artistic egotism," of his tendency to set up his own 
intellectual culture as the rule of his life. The fresh- 
ness of M. Scherer's repetition of these old complaints 
consists in his connecting them, as we have seen, 
with the criticism of Goethe's literary development. 
But M. Scherer has some direct blame of defects in 
his author's character which is worth quoting : — 

"It must fairly be confessed, the respect of Goethe for the 
mighty of this earth was carried to excesses which make one 
uncomfortable for him. One is confounded by these earnestnesses 
of servility. The King of Bavaria pays him a visit ; the dear 
poet feels his head go round. The story should be read in the 
journal of the Chancellor von Miiller : — Goethe after dinner 
became more and more animated and cordial. 'It was no 
light matter,' he said, *to work out the powerful impression 
produced by the King's presence, to assimilate it internally. It 



VIII.] A FRENCH CEITIC ON GOETHE. 229 

is difficult, in such circumstances, to keep one's balance and not 
to lose one's head. And yet the important matter is to extract 
from this apparition its real significance, to obtain a clear and 
distinct image of it.' " 

"Another time he got a letter from the same sovereign ; he 
talks of it to Eckermann with the same devout emotion — he 
' thanks Heaven for it as for a quite special favour. ' And when 
one thinks that the king in question was no other than that poor 
Louis of Bavaria, the ridiculous dilettante of whom Heine has 
made such fun ! Evidently Goethe had a strong dose of what 
the English call 'snobbishness.' The blemish is the more 
startling in him, because Goethe is, in other respects, a simple 
and manly character. Neither in his person nor in his manner 
of writing was he at all affected ; he has no self-conceit ; he 
does not pose. There is in this particular all the difference in 
the world between him and the majority of our own French 
authors, who seem always busy arranging their draperies, and 
asking themselves how they appear to the world and what the 
gallery thinks of them. " 

Goethe himself had in like manner called the 
French "the women of Europe." But let us remark 
that it was not "snobbishness" in Goethe, which 
made him take so seriously the potentate who loved 
Lola Montes ; it was simply his German "corporalism." 
A disciplinable and much -disciplined people, with 
little humour, and without the experience of a great 
national life, regards its official authorities in this 
devout and awe-struck way. To a German it seems 
profane and licentious to smile at his Dogberry. He 
takes Dogberry seriously and solemnly, takes him at 
his own valuation. 

We are all familiar with the general style of the 
critic who, as the phrase is, " cuts up " his author. 
Such a critic finds very few merits and a great many 
faults, and he ends either with a phrase of condemna- 
tion, or with a phrase of compassion, or with a sneer. 
We saw, however, in the case of Milton, that one 



230 MIXED ESSAYS. [viii. 

must not reckon on M. Scherer's ending in this 
fashion. After a course of severe criticism he wound 
up with earnest, almost reverential, praise. The same 
thing happens again in his treatment of Goethe. No 
admirer of Goethe will be satisfied with the treatment 
which hitherto we have seen Goethe receive at M. 
Scherer's hands. And the summing-up begins in a 
strain which will not please the admirer much 
better : — 

* ' To sum up, Goethe is a poet full of ideas and of observation, 
full of sense and taste, full even of feeling no less than of 
acumen, and all this united with, an incomparable gift of 
versification. But Goethe has no artlessness, no fire, no 
invention ; he is wanting in the dramatic fibre and cannot 
create ; reflection, in Goethe, has been too much for emotion, 
the savant in him for poetry, the philosophy of art for the 
artist," 

And yet the final conclusion is this : — 

"Nevertheless, Goethe remains one of the exceeding great 
among the sons of men. 'After all,' said he to one of his 
friends, * there are honest people up and down the world who 
have got light from my books ; and whoever reads them, and 
gives himself the trouble to understand me, will acknowledge 
that he has acquired thence a certain inward freedom. ' I should 
like to inscribe these words upon the pedestal of Goethe's 
statue. No juster praise could be found for him, and in very 
truth there cannot possibly be for any man a praise higher or 
more enviable." 

And in an article on Shakspeare, after a prophecy 
that the hour will come for Goethe, as in Germany it 
has of late come for Shakspeare, when criticism will 
take the place of adoration, M. Scherer, after insisting 
on those defects in Goethe of which we have been 
hearing so fully, protests that there are yet few 
writers for whom he feels a greater admiration than 
for Goethe, few to whom he is indebted for enjoy- 



VIII.] A FRENCH CEITIC ON GOETHE. 231 

ments more deep and more durable ; and declares 
that Goethe, although he has not Shakspeare's power, 
is a genius more vast, more universal, than Shakspeare. 
He adds, to be sure, that Shakspeare had an advantage 
over Goethe in not outliving himself. 

After all, then, M. Scherer is not far from being 
willing to allow, if any youthful devotee wishes to 
urge it, that "the Eternal created Goethe to be a 
guide to the universe." Yet he deals with the 
literary production of Goethe as we have seen. He 
is very far indeed from thinking it the performance 
"of the greatest poet of all times and of all peoples." 
And this is why I have thought M. Scherer's criti- 
cisms worthy of so much attention: — because a 
double judgment, somewhat of this kind, is the 
judgment about Goethe to which mature experience, 
the experience got " by the time one is forty years 
old," does really, I think, bring us. 

I do not agree with all M. Scherer's criticisms on 
Goethe's literary work. I do not myself feel, in 
reading the Gedichte, the truth of what M. Scherer 
says, — that Goethe has corrected and retouched them 
till he has taken all the warmth out of them. I do 
not myself feel the irritation in reading Goethe's 
Memoirs, and his prose generally, which they provoke 
in M. Scherer. True, the prose has none of those 
positive qualities of style which give pleasure, it is 
not the prose of Voltaire or Swift ; it is loose, ill- 
knit, diffuse ; it bears the marks of having been, as it 
mostly was, dictated, — and dictating is a detestable 
habit. But it is absolutely free from affectation ; it 
lets the real Goethe reach us. 

In other respects I agree in the main with the 
judgments passed by M. Scherer upon Goethe's works. 
Nay, some of them, such as Tasso and Iphigeneia, I 
should hesitate to extol so highly as he does. In that 



232 MIXED ESSAYS. [viii. 

peculiar world of thought and feeling, wherein Tasso 
and Iphigeneia have their existence, and into which 
the reader too must enter in order to understand 
them, there is something factitious; something 
devised and determined by the thinker, not given 
by the necessity of Nature herself; something too 
artificial, therefore, too deliberately studied, — as the 
French say, trop voulu. They cannot have the power 
of works where we are in a world of thought and 
feeling not invented but natural, — of works like the 
Agamemnon or Lear. Faust, too, suffers by comparison 
with works like the Agamemnon or Lear. M. Scherer 
says, with perfect truth, that the first part of Faust 
has not a single false tone or weak line. But it is a 
work, as he himself observes, " of episodes and 
detached scenes," not a work where the whole 
material together has been fused in the author's 
mind by strong and deep feeling, and then poured out 
in a single jet. It can never produce the single, power- 
ful total-impression of works which have thus arisen. 
The first part of Faust is, however, undoubtedly 
Goethe's best work. And it is so for the plain reason 
that, except his Gedichte, it is his most straightforward 
work in poetry. Mr. Hayward's is the best of the 
translations of Faust for the same reason, — because 
it is the most straightforward. To be simple and 
straightforward is, as Milton saw and said, of the 
essence of first-rate poetry. All that M. Scherer 
says of the ruinousness, to a poet, of " symbols, hiero- 
glyphics, mystifications," is just. When Mr. Carlyle 
praises the Helena for being " not a type of one thing, 
but a vague, fluctuating, fitful adumbration of many," 
he praises it for what is in truth its fatal defect. 
The Mdhrchen, again, on which Mr. Carlyle heaps 
such praise, calling it "one of the notablest per- 
formances produced for the last thousand years," a 



VIII.] A FRENCH CRITIC ON GOETHE. 233 

performance " in such a style of grandeur and celestial 
brilliancy and life as the Western imagination has 
not elsewhere reached;" the Mdhrchen, woven through- 
out of "symbol, hieroglyphic, mystification," is by 
that very reason a piece of solemn inanity, on which 
a man of Goethe's powers could never have wasted 
his time, but for his lot having been cast in a nation 
which has never lived. 

Mr. Carlyle has a sentence on Goethe which we 
may turn to excellent account for the criticism of 
such works as the Mdhrchen and Helena : — 

'' We should ask," he says, "what the poet's aim really and 
truly was, and how far this aim accorded, not with us and our 
individual crotchets and the crotchets of our little senate where 
we give or take the law, but with human nature and the nature 
of things at large ; with the universal principles of poetic 
beauty, not as they stand written in our text-books, but in the 
hearts and imaginations of all men." 

To us it seems lost labour to inquire what a poet's 
aim may have been ; but for aim let us read worJc, and 
we have here a sound and admirable rule of criticism. 
Let us ask how a poet's work accords, not with any 
one's fancies and crotchets, but " with human nature 
and the nature of things at large, with the universal 
principles of poetic beauty as they stand written in 
the hearts and imaginations of all men," and we 
shall have the surest rejection of symbol, hieroglyphic, 
and mystification in poetry. We shall have the 
surest condemnation of works like the Mdhrchen and 
the second part of Faust. 

It is by no means as the greatest of poets that 
Goethe deserves the pride and praise of his German 
countrymen. It is as the clearest, the largest, the 
most helpful thinker of modern times. It is not 
principally in his published works, it is in the 



234 MIXED ESSAYS. [viii. 

immense Goethe -literature of letter, journal, and 
conversation, in the volumes of Eiemar, Falk, 
Eckermann, the Chancellor von Miiller, in the letters 
to Merck and Madame von Stein and many others, 
in the correspondence with Schiller, the correspond- 
ence with Zelter, that the elements for an impression 
of the truly great, the truly significant Goethe are to 
be found. Goethe is the greatest poet of modern 
times, not because he is one of the half-dozen human 
beings who in the history of our race have shown 
the most signal gift for poetry, but because, having a 
very considerable gift for poetry, he was at the same 
time, in the width, depth, and richness of his criticism 
of life, by far our greatest modern man. He may be 
precious and important to us on this account above 
men of other and more alien times, who as poets rank 
higher. Nay, his preciousness and importance as a 
clear and profound modern spirit, as a master-critic 
of modern life, must communicate a worth of their 
own to his poetry, and may well make it erroneously 
seem to have a positive value and perfectness as 
poetry, more than it has. It is most pardonable for 
a student of Goethe, and may even for a time be 
serviceable, to fall into this error. Nevertheless, 
poetical defects, where they are present, subsist, and 
are what they are. And the same with defects of 
character. Time and attention bring them to light ; 
and when they are brought to light, it is not good for 
us, it is obstructing and retarding, to refuse to see 
them. Goethe himself would have warned us against 
doing so. We can imagine, indeed, that great and 
supreme critic reading Professor Grimm's laudation 
of his poetical work with lifted eyebrows, and M. 
Scherer's criticisms with acquiescence. 

Shall we say, however, that M. Scherer's tone in 
no way jars upon us, or that his presentation of 



VIII.] A FEENCH CEITIC ON GOETHE. 235 

Goethe, just and acute as is the view of faults both 
in Goethe's poetry and in Goethe's character, satisfies 
us entirely ? By no means. One could not say so 
of M. Scherer's presentation of Milton ; of the pre- 
sentation of Goethe one can say so still less. Goethe's 
faults are shown by M. Scherer, and they exist. 
Praise is given, and the right praise. But there is 
yet some defect in the portraiture as a whole. Tone 
and perspective are somehow a little wrong ; the 
distribution of colour, the proportions of light and 
shade, are not managed quite as they should be. 
One would like the picture to be painted over again 
by the same artist with the same talent, but a little 
differently. And meanwhile we instinctively, after 
M. Scherer's presentation, feel a desire for some last 
words of Goethe's own, something which may give a 
happier and more cordial turn to our thoughts, after 
they have been held so long to a frigid and censorious 
strain. And there rises to the mind this sentence : ^^Die 
Gestalt dieser Welt vergehf ; und ich mochte mich nur 
mit dem beschaftigen, was bleibende Yerhaltnisse sind." 
" The fashion of this world passeth away ; and I would 
fain occupy myself only with the abiding." There is 
the true Goethe, and with that Goethe we would end ! 
But let us be thankful for what M. Scherer brings, 
and let us acknowledge with gratitude his presentation 
of Goethe to be, not indeed the definitive picture of 
Goethe, but a contribution, and a very able contribu- 
tion, to that definitive picture. We are told that 
since the war of 1870 Frenchmen are abandoning 
literature for science. Why do they not rather learn 
of this accomplished senator of theirs, with his 
Geneva training, to extend their old narrow literary 
range a little, and to know foreign literatures as M. 
Scherer knows them % 



IX. 

GEOEGE SA¥D. 

The months go round, and anniversaries return ; on 
the ninth of June^ George Sand will have been dead 
just one year. She was born in 1804 ; she was 
almost seventy-two years old when she died. She 
came to Paris after the revolution of 1830, with her 
Indiana written, and began her life of independence, 
her life of authorship, her life as George Sand. She 
continued at work till she died. For forty-five years 
she was writing and publishing, and filled Europe 
with her name. 

It seems to me but the other day that I saw her, 
yet it was in the August of 1846, more than thirty 
years ago. I saw her in her own Berry, at Nohant, 
where her childhood and youth were passed, where 
she returned to live after she became famous, where 
she died and has now her grave. There must be 
many who, after reading her books, have felt the 
same desire which in those days of my youth, in 
1846, took me to Nohant, — the desire to see the 
country and the places of which the books that so 
charmed us were full. Those old provinces of the 
centre of France, primitive and slumbering, — Berry, 
La Marche, Bourbonnais ; those sites and streams in 

1 1877. 



IX.] GEORGE SAND. 237 

them, of name cnce so indifferent to us, but to which 
George Sand gave such a music for our ear, — La 
Chatre, Ste. S6vere, the ValUe Noire, the Indre, the 
Creuse ; how many a reader of George Sand must 
have desired, as I did, after frequenting them so much 
in thought, fairly to set eyes upon them ! 

I had been reading Jeanne. I made up my mind 
to go and see Toulx Ste. Croix and Boussac, and the 
Druidical stones on Mont Barlot, the Fierres Jaundtres. 
I remember looking out Toulx in Cassini's great map 
at the Bodleian Library. The railway through the 
centre of France went in those days no farther 
than Vierzon. From Vierzon to Ch^teauroux one 
travelled by an ordinary diligence, from Chateauroux 
to La Chatre by a humbler diligence, from La Chatre 
to Boussac by the humblest diligence of all. At 
Boussac diligence ended, and patache began. Between 
Chateauroux and La Chatre, a mile or two before 
reaching the latter place, the road passes by the 
village of Nohant. The Chateau of Nohant, in which 
Madame Sand lived, is a plain house by the roadside, 
with a walled garden. Down in the meadows, not 
far off, flows the Indre, bordered by trees. I passed 
Nohant without stopping, at La Chatre I dined and 
changed diligence, and went on by night up the valley 
of the Indre, the Valine Noire, past Ste. Severe to 
Boussac, At Ste. Severe the Indre is quite a small 
stream. In the darkness we quitted its valley, and 
when day broke we were in the wilder and barer 
country of La Marche, with Boussac before us, and 
its high castle on a precipitous rock over the Little 
Creuse. 

That day and the next I wandered through a 
silent country of heathy and ferny landes, a region of 
granite boulders, holly, and broom, of copsewood and 
great chestnut trees ; a region of broad light, and 



238 MIXED ESSAYS. [ix. 

fresh breezes, and wide horizons. I visited the 
Pierres Jaundtres. I stood at sunset on the platform 
of Toulx Ste. Croix, by the scrawled and almost 
effaced stone lions, — a relic, it is said, of the English 
rule, — and gazed on the blue mountains of Auvergne 
filling the distance, and, south-eastward of them, in a 
still farther and fainter distance, on what seemed to 
be the mountains over Le Puy and the high valley 
of the Loire. 

From Boussac I addressed to Madame Sand the 
sort of letter of which she must in her lifetime have 
had scores, a letter conveying to her, in bad French, 
the homage of a youthful and enthusiastic foreigner 
who had read her works with delight. She received 
the infliction good-naturedly, for on my return to La 
Chatre I found a message left at the inn by a servant 
from Nohant that Madame Sand would be glad to 
see me if I called. The mid-day breakfast at Nohant 
was not yet over when I reached the house, and I 
found a large party assembled. I entered with 
some trepidation, as well I might, considering how 
I had got there ; but the simplicity of Madame 
Sand's manner put me at ease in a moment. 
She named some of those present; amongst them 
were her son and daughter, the Maurice and Solange 
so familiar to us from her books, and Chopin with 
his wonderful eyes. There was at that time nothing 
astonishing in Madame Sand's appearance. She was 
not in man's clothes, she wore a sort of costume not 
impossible, I should think (although on these matters 
I speak with hesitation), to members of the fair sex 
at this hour amongst ourselves, as an out-door dress 
for the country or for Scotland. She made me sit by 
her and poured out for me the insipid and depressing 
beverage, hoisson fade et 7n4lancoUque, as Balzac called 
it, for which English people are thought abroad to be 



IX.] GEORGE SAND. 239 

always thirsting, — tea. She conversed of the country- 
through which I had been wandering, of the Berry 
peasants and their mode of life, of Switzerland 
whither I was going ; she touched politely, by a few 
questions and remarks, upon England and things and 
persons English, — upon Oxford and Cambridge, Byron, 
Bulwer. As she spoke, her eyes, head, bearing, were 
all of them striking; but the main impression she 
made was an impression of what I have already men- 
tioned, — of simplicity, frank, cordial simplicity. After 
breakfast she led the way into the garden, asked me 
a few kind questions about myself and my plans, 
gathered a flower or two and gave them to me, shook 
hands heartily at the gate, and I saw her no more. 
In 1859 M. Michelet gave me a letter to her, which 
would have enabled me to present myself in more 
regular fashion. Madame Sand was then in Paris. 
But a day or two passed before I could call, and 
when I called, Madame Sand had left Paris and had 
gone back to Nohant. The impression of 1846 has 
remained my single impression of her. 

Of her gaze, form, and speech, that one impression 
is enough ; better perhaps than a mixed impression 
from seeing her at sundry times and after successive 
changes. But as the first anniversary of her death 
draws near, there arises again a desire which I felt 
when she died, the desire, not indeed to take a critical 
survey of her, — very far from it. I feel no inclina- 
tion at all to go regularly through her productions, 
to , classify and value them one by one, to pick out 
from them what the English public may most like, or 
to present to that public, for the most part ignorant 
of George Sand and for the most part indifferent to 
her, a full history and a judicial estimate of the 
woman and of her writings. But I desire to recall 
to my own mind, before the occasion offered by her 



240 MIXED ESSAYS. [ix. 

death passes quite away, — to recall and collect the 
elements of that powerful total-impression which, as 
a writer, she made upon me; to recall and collect 
them, to bring them distinctly into view, to feel them 
in all their depth and power once more. What I 
here attempt is not for the benefit of the indifi'erent ; 
it is for my own satisfaction, it is for myself. But per- 
haps those for whom George Sand has been a friend 
and a power will find an interest in following me. 

Le sentiment de la vie idSale, qui n'est autre que la vie 
normale telle que nous sommes ap;peUs h la connattre; — 
" the sentiment of the ideal life, which is none other 
than man's normal life as we shall some day know 
it," — those words from one of her last publications 
give the ruling thought of George Sand, the ground- 
motive, as they say in music, of all her strain. It is 
as a personage inspired by this motive that she 
interests us. 

The English public conceives of her as of a novel- 
writer who wrote stories more or less interesting ; 
the earlier ones objectionable and dangerous, the 
later ones, some- of them, unexceptionable and fit to 
be put into the hands of the youth of both sexes. 
With such a conception of George Sand, a story of 
hers like Consuelo comes to be elevated in England 
into quite an undue relative importance, and to pass 
with very many people for her typical work, dis- 
playing all that is really valuable and significant in 
the author. Consuelo is a charming story. But 
George Sand is something more than a maker of 
charming stories, and only a portion of her is shown 
in Consuelo. She is more, likewise, than a creator of 
characters. She has created, with admirable truth to 
nature, characters most attractive and attaching, such 
as Edm6e, Genevieve, Germain. But she is not 



IX.] GEOKGE SAND. 241 

adequately expressed by them. \Ye do not know 
her unless we feel the spirit which goes through her 
work as a whole. 

In order to feel this spirit it is not, indeed, neces- 
sary to read all that she ever produced. Even three 
or four only out of her many books might suffice to 
show her to us, if they were well chosen ; let us say, 
the Lettres d'un Voyageur, Mauprat, Francois le Champi, 
and a story which I was glad to see Mr. Myers, in 
his appreciative notice of Madame Sand, single out 
for praise, — Valvhdre. In these may be found all the 
principal elements of their author's strain : the cry of 
agony and revolt, the trust in nature and beauty, the 
aspiration towards a purged and renewed human 
society. 

Of George Sand's strain, during forty years, these 
are the grand elements. Now it is one of them 
which appears most prominently, now it is another. 
The cry of agony and revolt is in her earlier work 
only, and passes away in her later. But in the 
evolution of these three elements, — the passion of 
agony and revolt, the consolation from nature and 
from beauty, the ideas of social renewal, — in the 
evolution of these is George Sand and George Sand's 
life and power. Through their evolution her constant 
motive declares and unfolds itself, that motive which 
we have set forth above : " the sentiment of the 
ideal life, which is none other than man's normal life 
as we shall one day know it." This is the motive, 
and through these elements is its evolution ; an 
evolution pursued, moreover, with the most unfailing 
resolve, the most absolute sincerity. 

The hour of agony and revolt passed away for 

George Sand, as it passed away for Goethe, as it 

passes away for their readers likewise. It passes 

away and does not return ; yet those who, amid the 

VOL. IV. R 



242 MIXED ESSAYS. [ix. 

agitations, more or less stormy, of their youth, betook 
themselves to the early works of George Sand, may 
in later life cease to read them, indeed, but they can 
no more forget them than they can forget WertJier. 
George Sand speaks somewhere of her "days of 
Corinne." Days of Valentine, many of us may in like 
manner say, — days of Valentine, days of Ldia, days 
never to return ! They are gone, we shall read the 
books no more, and yet how ineffaceable is their 
impression ! How the sentences from George Sand's 
works of that period still linger in our memory and 
haunt the ear with their cadences ! Grandiose and 
moving, they come, those cadences, like the sighing 
of the wind through the forest, like the breaking of 
the waves on the seashore. L6lia in her cell on the 
mountain of the Camaldoli — 

"Sibyl, Sibyl forsaken ; spirit of the days of old, joined to a 
brain whicb rebels against the divine inspiration ; broken lyre, 
mute instrument, whose tones the world of to-day, if it heard 
them, could not understand, but yet in whose depth the eternal 
harmony murmurs imprisoned ; priestess of death, I, I who feel 
and know that before now I have been Pythia, have wept before 
now, before now have spoken, but who cannot recollect, alas, 
cannot utter the word of healing ! Yes, yes ! I remember the 
cavern of truth and the access of revelation ; but the word of 
human destiny, I have forgotten it ; but the talisman of deliver- 
ance, it is lost from my hand. And yet, indeed, much, much 
have I seen ! and when suffering presses me sore, when indigna- 
tion takes hold of me, when I feel Prometheus wake up in my 
heart and beat his puissant wings against the stone which con- 
fines him, — oh ! then, in prey to a frenzy without a name, to a 
despair Avithout bounds, I invoke the unknown master and friend 
who might illumine my spirit and set free my tongue ; but I 
grope in darkness, and my tired arms grasp nothing save delu- 
sive shadows. And for ten thousand years, as the sole answer 
to my cries, as the sole comfort in my agony, I hear astir, over 
this earth acccurst, the despairing sob of impotent agony. 



IX.] GEOEGE SAND. 243 

For ten thousand years I have cried in infinite space : Truth ! 
Truth ! For ten thousand years infinite space keeps answering 
me : Desire, Desire. Sibyl forsaken ! mute Pythia ! dash 
then thy head against the rocks of thy cavern, and mingle thy 
raging blood with the foam of the sea ; for thou deemest thyself 
to have possessed the almighty Word, and these ten thousand 
years thou art seeking him in vain. " 

Or Sylvia's cry over Jacques by his glacier in the 
Tyrol— 

"When such a man as thou art is born into a world where 
he can do no true service ; when, with the soul of an apostle 
and the courage of a martyr, he has simply to push his way 
among the heartless and aimless crowds which vegetate without 
living ; the atmosphere sufibcates him and he dies. Hated by 
sinners, the mock of fools, disliked by the envious, abandoned 
by the weak, what can he do but return to God, weary with 
having laboured in vain, in sorrow at having accomplished 
nothing ? The world remains in all its vileness and in all its 
hatefulness ; this is what men call, * the triumph of good sense 
over enthusiasm. ' " 

Or Jacques himself, and his doctrine — 

"Life is arid and terrible, repose is a dream, prudence is 
useless ; mere reason alone serves simply to dry up the heart ; 
there is but one virtue, the eternal sacrifice of oneself." 

Or George Sand speaking in her own person, in 

the Letfres d'un Foyageur — 

" Ah, no, I was not born to be a poet, I was born to love. 
It is the misfortune of my destiny, it is the enmity of others, 
which have made me a wanderer and an artist. What I wanted 
was to live a human life ; I had a heart, it has been torn 
violently from my breast. All that has been left me is a head, 
a head full of noise and pain, of horrible memories, of images 
of woe, of scenes of outrage. And because in writing stories to 
earn my bread I could not help remembering my sorrows, 
because I had the audacity to say that in married life there 
were to be found miserable beings, by reason of the weakness 



244 MIXED ESSAYS. [ix. 

whicli is enjoined upon the woman, by reason of the brutality 
which is permitted to the man, by reason of the turpitudes 
which society covers and protects with a veil, I am pronounced 
immoral, I am treated as if I were the enemy of the human 
race. " 

If only, alas, together with her honesty and her 
courage, she could feel within herself that she had 
also light and hope and power ; that she was able to 
lead those whom she loved, and who looked to her 
for guidance ! But no ; her very own children, 
witnesses of her suffering, her uncertainity, her 
struggles, her evil report, may come to doubt her : — 

"My poor children, my own flesh and blood, will perhaps 
turn upon me and say : ' You are leading us wrong, you mean 
to ruin us as well as yourself. Are you not unhappy, repro- 
bated, evil spoken of ? What have you gained by these unequal 
struggles, by these much trumpeted duels of yours with custom 
and belief ? Let us do as others do ; let us get what is to be 
got out of this easy and tolerant world. ' 

** This is what they will say to me. Or at best, if, out of 
tenderness for me, or from their own natural disposition, they 
give ear to my words and believe me, whither shall I guide 
them ? Into what abysses shall we go and plunge ourselves, 
we three ? — for we shall be our own three upon earth, and not 
one soul with us. What shall I reply to them if they come 
and say to me : ' Yes, life is unbearable in a world like this. 
Let us die together. Show us the path of Bernica, or the lake 
of Stenio, or the glaciers of Jacques,'" 

Nevertheless the failure of the impassioned seekers 
of a new and better world proves nothing, George 
Sand maintains, for the world as it is. Ineffectual 
they may be, but the world is still more ineffectual, 
and it is the world's course which is doomed to ruin, 
not theirs. "What has it done," exclaims George 
Sand in her preface to Guerin's Centam% "what has 
it done for our moral education, and what is it doing 
for our children, this society shielded with such care ?" 



IX.] GEORGE SAND. 245 

Nothing. Those whom it calls vain complainers and 
rebels and madmen, may reply : — 

" Suffer us to bewail our martyrs, poets without a country 
that we are, forlorn singers, well versed in the causes of their 
misery and of our own. You do not comprehend the malady 
which killed them ; they themselves did not comprehend it. 
If one or two of us at the present day open our eyes to a new 
light, is it not by a strange and unaccountable good Provi- 
dence ; and have we not to seek our grain of faith in storm 
and darkness, combated by doubt, irony, the absence of all 
sympathy, all example, all brotherly aid, all protection and 
countenance in high places ? Try yourselves to speak to your 
brethren heart to heart, conscience to conscience ! Try it ! — 
but you cannot, busied as you are with watching and patching 
up in all directions your dykes which the flood is invading. 
The material existence of this society of yours absorbs all your 
care, and requires more than all your efi"orts. Meanwhile the 
powers of human thought are growing into strength, and rise 
on all sides around you. Amongst these threatening appari- 
tions, there are some which fade away and re-enter the darkness, 
because the hour of life has not yet struck, and the fiery spirit 
which quickened them could strive no longer with the horrors 
of this present chaos ; but there are others that can wait, and 
you will find them confronting you, up and alive, to say : * You 
have allowed the death of our brethren, and we, we do not 
mean to die.'" 

She did not, indeed. How should she faint and 
fail before her time, because of a world out of joint, 
because of the reign of stupidity, because of the 
passions of youth, because of the difficulties and 
disgusts of married life in the native seats of the 
homme sensuel moyen, the average sensual man, she 
who could feel so well the power of those eternal 
consolers, nature and beauty ? From the very first 
they introduce a note of suavity in her strain of grief 
and passion. Who can forget the lanes and meadows 
of Valentine? 



246 MIXED ESSAYS. [ix. 

George Sand is one of the few French writers 
who keep us closely and truly intimate with rural 
nature. She gives us the wild -flowers by their 
actual names, — snowdrop, primrose, columbine, iris, 
scabious. Nowhere has she touched her native Berry 
and its little-known landscape, its campagnes ignor^es, 
with a lovelier charm than in Valentine. The wind- 
ing and deep lanes running out of the high road on 
either side, the fresh and calm spots they take us to, 
" meadows of a tender green, plaintive brooks, clumps 
of alder and mountain ash, a whole world of suave 
and pastoral nature," — how delicious it all is ! The 
grave and silent peasant whose very dog will hardly 
deign to bark at you, the great white ox, " the un- 
failing dean of these pastures," staring solemnly at 
you from the thicket ; the farmhouse " with its 
avenue of maples, and the Indre, here hardly more 
than a bright rivulet, stealing along through rushes 
and yellow iris, in the field below," — who, I say, can 
forget them? And that one lane in especial, the 
lane where Ath6nais puts her arm out of the side 
window of the rustic carriage and gathers May from 
the over-arching hedge, — that lane with its startled 
blackbirds, and humming insects, and limpid water, 
and swaying water-plants, and shelving gravel, and 
yellow wagtails hopping half-pert, half-frightened, on 
the sand, — that lane with its rushes, cresses, and 
mint below, its honeysuckle and traveller's-joy above, 
— how gladly might one give all that strangely 
English picture in English, if the charm of Madame 
Sand's language did not here defy translation ! Let 
us try something less difficult, and yet something 
where we may still have her in this her beloved 
world of " simplicity, and sky, and fields and trees, 
and peasant , life, — peasant life looked at, by prefer- 
ence, on its good and sound side." Voyez done la 



IX.] GEORGE SAND. 247 

simpliciU, vous autres, voyez le del et les champs^ ef les 
arbres, et les paysans^ surtoid dans ce qu'ils ont de Ion et 
de vrai. 

The introduction to La Mare au Dkible will give 
us what we want. George Sand has been looking at 
an engraving of Holbein's Labourer. An old thick- 
set peasant, in rags, is driving his plough in the 
midst of a field. All around spreads a wild land- 
scape, dotted with a few poor huts. The sun is 
setting behind a hill ; the day of toil is nearly over. 
It has been a hard one ; the ground is rugged and 
stony, the labourer's horses are but skin and bone, 
weak and exhausted. There is but one alert figure, 
the skeleton Death, who with a whip skips nimbly 
along at the horses' side and urges the team. Under 
the picture is a quotation in old French, to the effect 
that after the labourer's life of travail and service, in 
which he has to gain his bread by the sweat of his 
brow, here comes Death to fetch him away. And 
from so rude a life does Death take him, says George 
Sand, that Death is hardly unwelcome ; and in 
another composition by Holbein, where men of almost 
every condition, — popes, sovereigns, lovers, gamblers, 
monks, soldiers, — are taunted with their fear of 
Death and do indeed see his approach with terror, 
Lazarus alone is easy and composed, and sitting on 
his dunghill at the rich man's door, tells Death that 
he does not dread him. 

With her thoughts full of Holbein's mournful 
picture, George Sand goes out into the fields of her 
own Berry : — 

" My walk was by the border of a field which some peasants 
were getting ready for being sown presently. The space to be 
ploughed was wide, as in Holbein's picture. The landscape 
was vast also ; the great lines of green which it contained were 
just touched with russet by the approach of autumn ; on the 



248 MIXED ESSAYS. [ix. 

rich brown soil recent rain had left, in a good many furrows, 
lines of water, which shone in the sun like silver threads. 
The day was clear and soft, and the earth, gave out a light 
smoke where it had been freshly laid open by the plough-share. 
At the top of the field an old man, whose broad back and severe 
face were like those of the old peasant of Holbein, but whose 
clothes told no tale of poverty, was gravely driving his plough 
of an antique shape, drawn by two tranquil oxen, with coats of 
a pale buff, real patriarchs of the fallow, tall of make, somewhat 
thin, with long and backward-sloping horns, the kind of old 
workmen who by habit have got to be brothers to one another, 
as throughout our country-side they are called, and who, if 
one loses the other, refuse to work with a new comrade, and 
fret themselves to death. People unacquainted with the country 
wiU not believe in this affection of the ox for his yoke-fellow. 
They should come and see one of the poor beasts in a corner of 
his stable, thin, wasted, lashing with his restless tail his lean 
flanks, blowing uneasily and fastidiously on the provender 
offered to him, his eyes for ever turned towards the stable door, 
scratching with his foot the empty place left at his side, sniff- 
ing the yokes and bands which his companion has worn, and 
incessantly calliugfor him with piteous lowings. The ox-herd will 
tell you : There is a pair of oxen done for ! his brother is dead, 
and this one will work no more. He ought to be fattened for 
killing ; but we cannot get him to eat, and in a short time he 
will have starved himself to death. " 

How faithful and close it is, this contact of George 
Sand with country things, with the life of nature in 
its vast plenitude and pathos ! And always in the 
end the human interest, as is right, emerges and pre- 
dominates. What is the central figure in the fresh 
and calm rural world of George Sand'? It is the 
peasant. And what is the peasant 1 He is France, 
life, the future. And this is the strength of George 
Sand, and of her second movement, after the first 
movement of energy and revolt was over, towards 
nature and beauty, towards the country, towards 
primitive life, the peasant. She regarded nature and 



IX.] GEORGE SA^^D. 249 

beauty, not with the selfish and solitary joy of the 
artist who but seeks to appropriate them for his own 
purposes, she regarded them as a treasure of immense 
and hitherto unknown application, as a vast power of 
healing and delight for all, and for the peasant first 
and foremost. Yes, she cries, the simple life is the 
true one ! but the peasant, the great organ of that 
life, "the minister in that vast temple which only 
the sky is vast enough to embrace," the peasant is 
not doomed to toil and moil in it for ever, overdone 
and unawakened, like Holbein's labourer, and to 
have for his best comfort the thought that death will 
set him free. Non^ nous n'avons plus affaire h la mart, 
mais a la vie. " Our business henceforth is not with 
death, but with life." 

Joy is the great lifter of men, the great unfolder. 
// faut que la vie soit bonne afin qu'elle soil feconde. 
" For life to be fruitful, life must be felt as a bless- 



' ' Nature is eternally young, beautiful, bountiful. She pours 
but beauty and poetry for all that live, she pours it out on all 
plants, and the plants are permitted to expand in it freely. 
She possesses the secret of happiness, and no man has been 
able to take it away from her. The happiest of men would be 
he who possessing the science of his labour and working with 
his hands, earning his comfort and his freedom by the exercise 
of his intelligent force, found time to live by the heart and by 
the brain, to understand his own work and to love the work of 
God. The artist has satisfactions of this kind in the contem- 
plation and reproduction of nature's beauty ; but when he sees 
the afiQiction of those who people this paradise of earth, the 
upright and human-hearted artist feels a trouble in the midst 
of his enjoyment The happy day will be when mind, heart, 
and hands shall be alive together, shall work in concert ; when 
there shall be a harmony between God's munificence and man's 
delight in it. Then, instead of the piteous and frightful figure 
of Death, skipping along whip in hand by the peasant's side in 



250 MIXED ESSAYS. [ix. 

the field, the allegorical painter will place there a radiant 
angel, sowing with full hands the blessed grain in the smoking 
furrow. 

* ' And the dream of a kindly, free, poetic, laborious, simple 
existence for the tiller of the field is not so hard to realise that 
it must be banished into the world of chimseras. Yirgil's 
sweet and sad cry : * happy peasants, if they but knew their 
own blessings ! ' is a regret ; but like all regrets, it is at the 
same time a prediction. The day will come when the labourer 
may be also an artist ; — not in the sense of rendering nature's 
beauty, a matter which will be then of much less importance, 
but in the sense of feeling it. Does not this mysterious intuition 
of poetic beauty exist in him already in the form of instinct 
and of vague reverie ? " 

It exists in him, too, adds Madame Sand, in the 
form of that nostalgia, that home-sickness, which for 
ever pursues the genuine French peasant if you 
transplant him. The peasant has here, then, the 
elements of the poetic sense, and of its high and 
pure satisfactions. 

" But one part of the enjoyment which we possess is wanting 
to him, a pure and lofty pleasure which is surely his due, 
minister that he is in that vast temple which only the sky is 
vast enough to embrace. He has not the conscious knowledge 
of his sentiment. Those who have sentenced him to servitude 
from his mother's womb, not being able to debar him from 
reverie, have debarred him from reflection. 

"Well, for all that, taking the peasant as he is, incomplete 
and seemingly condemned to an eternal childhood, I yet find 
him a more beautiful object than the man in whom his acquisi- 
tion of knowledge has stifled sentiment. Do not rate yourselves 
so high above him, many of you who imagine that you have 
an imprescriptible right to his obedience ; for you yourselves 
are the most incomplete and -the least seeing of men. That 
simplicity of his soul is more to be loved than the false lights 
of yours." 

In all this we are passing from the second element 
in George Sand to the third, — her aspiration for a 



IX.] GEOKGE SAND. 251 

social new-birth, a renaissance sociale. It is eminently 
the ideal of France ; it was hers. Her religion con- 
nected itself with this ideal. In the convent where 
she was brought up, she had in youth had an 
awakening of fervent mystical piety in the Catholic 
form. That form she could not keep. Popular 
religion of all kinds, with its deep internal impossi- 
bilities, its " heaven and heU serving to cover the 
illogical manifestations of the Divinity's apparent 
designs respecting us," its " God made in our image, 
siUy and malicious, vain and puerile, irritable or 
tender, after our fashion," lost all sort of hold upon 
her: — 

' ' Communion with such a God is impossible to me ; I con- 
fess it. He is wiped out from my memory : there is no corner 
where I can find him any more. Nor do I find such a God out 
of doors either ; he is not in the fields and waters, he is not in 
the starry sky. No, nor yet in the churches where men bow 
themselves ; it is an extinct message, a dead letter, a thought 
that has done its day. Nothing of this belief, nothing of this 
God, subsists in me any longer. " 

She refused to lament over the loss, to esteem it 
other than a benefit : — 

"It is an addition to our stock of hght, this detachment 
from the idolatrous conception of religion. It is no loss of the 
religious sense, as the persisters in idolatry maintain. It is 
quite the contrary, it is a restitution of allegiance to the true 
Divinity. It is a step made in the direction of this Divinity, 
it is an abjuration of the dogmas which did him dishonour. " 

She does not attempt to give of this Divinity an 
account much more precise than that which we have 
in Wordsworth, — " a presence that disturbs me ivith the 
joxj of animating thoughts." 

''Everything is divine (she says), even matter; everything 
is superhuman, even man. God is everywhere ; he is in me in 



252 MIXED ESSAYS. [ix. 

a measure proportioned, to the little that I am. My present 
life separates me from him just in the degree determined by 
the actual state of childhood of our race. Let me content 
myself, in all my seeking, to feel after him, and to possess of 
him as much as this imperfect soul can take in with the 
intellectual sense I have." 

And she concludes : — 

"The day vdll come when we will no longer talk about 
God idly, nay, when we shall talk about him as little as 
possible. AVe shall cease to set him forth dogmatically, to 
dispute about his nature. "We shall put compulsion on no one 
to pray to him, we shall leave the whole business of worship 
within the sanctuary of each man's conscience. And this will 
happen when we are really religious." 

Meanwhile the sense of this spirit or presence 
which animates us, the sense of the divine, is our 
stronghold and our consolation. A man may say of 
it : "It comes not by my desert, but the atom of 
divine sense given to me nothing can rob me of." 
Divine sense, — the phrase is a vague one ; but it 
stands to Madame Sand for that to which are to be 
referred " all the best thoughts and the best actions 
of life, suffering endured, duty achieved, whatever 
purifies our existence, whatever vivifies our love." 

Madame Sand is a Frenchwoman, and her religion 
is therefore, as we might expect, with peculiar fer- 
vency social. Always she has before her mind " the 
natural law which will have it (the italics are her 
own) that the species man cannot subsist and prosper 
but by association^ Whatever else we may be in 
creation, we are, first and foremost, " at the head of 
the species which are called by instinct, and led by 
necessity, to the life of association." The word love 
— the great word, as she justly says, of the New 
Testament — acquires from her social enthusiasm a 
peculiar significance to her : — 



IX.] GEORGE SAND. 253 

"The word is a great one, because it involYes infinite con- 
sequences. To love means to help one another, to have 
joint aspirations to act in concert, to labour for the same end, 
to develop to its ideal consummation the fraternal instinct, 
thanks to which mankind have brought the earth under their 
dominion. Every time that he has been false to this instinct 
which is his law of life, his natural destiny, man has seen his 
temples crumble, his societies dissolve, his intellectual sense 
go wrong, his moral sense die out. The future is founded 
on love." 

So long as love is thus spoken of in the general, 
the ordinary serious Englishman will have no diffi- 
culty in inclining himself with respect while Madame 
Sand speaks of it. But when he finds that love 
implies, with her, social equality, he will begin to be 
staggered. And in truth for almost every English- 
man Madame Sand's strong language about equality, 
and about France as the chosen vessel for exhibiting 
it, will sound exaggerated. " The human ideal," 
she says, "as well as the social ideal, is to achieve 
equality." France, which has made equality its 
rallying cry, is therefore " the nation which loves 
and is loved," la nation qui aime et qu'on aime. The 
republic of equality is in her eyes " an ideal, a philo- 
sophy, a religion." She invokes the "holy doctrine 
of social liberty and fraternal equality, ever reappear- 
ing as a ray of love and truth amidst the storm." 
She calls it "the goal of man and the law of the 
future." She thinks it the secret of the civilisation 
of France, the most civilised of nations. Amid the 
disasters of the late war she cannot forbear a cry of 
astonishment at the neutral nations, insensibles ct 
Vdgorgement d^une civilisation comme la ndtre, " looking 
on with insensibility while a civilisation such as ours 
has its throat cut." Germany, with its stupid ideal 
of corporalism and Krujppism, is contrasted with 



254 MIXED ESSAYS. [ix. 

France, full of social dreams, too civilised for war, 
incapable of planning and preparing war for twenty 
years, she is so incapable of hatred ; — nous sommes 
si incapahles de hair / We seem to be listening, not 
to George Sand, but to M. Victor Hugo, half genius, 
half charlatan ; to M. Victor Hugo, or even to one of 
those French declaimers in whom we come down to 
no genius and all charlatan. 

The form of such outbursts as we have quoted will 
always be distasteful to an Englishman. It is to be 
remembered that they came from Madame Sand 
under the pressure and anguish of the terrible 
calamities of 1870. But what we are most con- 
cerned with, and what Englishmen in general regard 
too little, is the degree of truth contained in these 
allegations that France is the most civilised of 
nations, and that she is so, above all, by her "holy 
doctrine of equality." How comes the idea to be so 
current; and to be passionately believed in, as we 
have seen, by such a woman as George Sand 1 It 
was so passionately believed in by her, that when 
one seeks, as I am now seeking, to recall her image, 
the image is incomplete if the passionate belief is 
kept from appearing. 

I will not, with my scanty space, now discuss the 
belief ; but I will seek to indicate how it must have 
commended itself, I think, to George Sand. I have 
somewhere called France the "country of Europe where 
the people is most alive." The people is what interested 
George Sand. And in France the people is, above all, 
the peasant. The workman in Paris or in other great 
towns of France may afford material for such pictures 
as those which M. Zola has lately given us in 
LAssommoir — pictures of a kind long ago labelled by 
Madame Sand as "the literature of mysteries of iniquity, 
which men of talent and imagination try to bring 



IX.] GEORGE SAND. 255 



into fasliiou." But the real ;peopU in France, the 
foundation of things there, both in George Sand's 
eyes and in reality, is the peasant. The peasant was 
the object of Madame Sand's fondest predilections in 
the present, and happiest hopes in the future. The 
Revolution and its doctrine of equality had made the 
French peasant. What wonder, then, if she saluted 
the doctrine as a holy and paramount one 1 

And the French peasant is really, so far as I can 
see, the largest and strongest element of soundness 
which the body social of any European nation possesses. 
To him is due that astonishing recovery which 
France has made since her defeat, and which George 
Sand predicted in the very hour of ruin. Yes, in 
1870 she predicted ce reveil g6n6ral qui va suivrej a la 
grande surpise des autres nations, Vesphe d'agonie ok 
elles nous voient tomMs, "the general re-arising which, 
to the astonishment of other nations, is about to 
follow the sort of agony in which they now see us 
lying." To the condition, character, and qualities of 
the French peasant this recovery is in the main due. 
His material well-being is known to all of us. M. de 
Laveleye, the well-known economist, a Belgian and a 
Protestant, says that France, being the country of 
Europe where the soil is more divided than anywhere 
except in Switzerland and Norway, is at the same 
time the country where well-being is most widely 
spread, where wealth has of late years increased 
most, and where population is least outrunning the 
limits which, for the comfort and progress of the 
working classes themselves, seem necessary. George 
Sand could see, of course, the well-being of the 
French peasant, for we can all see it. 

But there is more. George Sand was a woman, 
with a woman's ideal of gentleness, of " the charm of 
good manners," as essential to civilisation. She has 



256 MIXED ESSAYS. [ix. 

somewhere spoken admirably of the variety and balance 
offerees which go to make up true civilisation; "certain 
forces of weakness, docility, attractiveness, suavity, are 
here just as real forces as forces of vigour, encroach- 
ment, violence, or brutality." Yes, as real forces, 
although Prince Bismarck cannot see it ; because 
human nature requires them, and, often as they may 
be baffled, and slow as may be the process of their 
asserting themselves, mankind is not satisfied with its 
own civilisation, and keeps fidgeting at it and altering 
it again and again, until room is made for them. 
George Sand thought the French people, — meaning 
principally, again, by the French people the people 
properly so called, the peasant, — she thought it "the 
most kindly, the most amiable, of all peoples." Nothing 
is more touching than to read in her Journal, written 
in 1870, whilst she was witnessing what seemed to 
be "the agony of the Latin races," and undergoing 
what seemed to be the process of " dying in a general 
death of one's family, one's country, and one's nation," 
how constant is her defence of the people, the peasant, 
against her Eepublican friends. Her Eepublican 
friends were furious with the peasant ; accused him 
of stolidity, cowardice, want of patriotism ; accused 
him of having given them the Empire, with all its 
vileness ; wanted to take away from him the sufi'rage. 
Again and again does George Sand take up his defence, 
and warn her friends of the folly and danger of their 
false estimate of him. " The contempt of the masses, 
there," she cries, " is the misfortune and crime of the 
present moment!" "To execrate the people," she 
exclaims again, " is real blasphemy ; the people is 
worth more than we are." 

If the peasant gave us the Empire, says Madame 
Sand, it was because he saw the parties of liberals 
disputing, gesticulating, and threatening to tear one 



IX.] GEORGE SAND. 257 

another asunder and France too ; he was told the 
Empire is peace, and he accepted the Empire. The 
peasant was deceived, he is uninstructed, he moves 
slowly j but he moves, he has admirable virtues, and 
in him, says George Sand, is our life : — 

' ' Poor Jacques Bonhomme ! accuse thee and despise thee 
who will ; for my part I pity thee, and in spite of thy faults I 
shall always love thee. Never will I forget how, a child, I was 
carried asleep on thy shoulders, how I was given over to thy 
care and followed thee everywhere, to the field, the stall, the 
cottage. They are all dead, those good old people, who have 
borne me in their arms ; but I remember them well, and I appre- 
ciate at this hour, to the minutest detail, the pureness, the 
kindness, the patience, the good humour, the poetry, which 
presided over that rustic education amidst disasters of like kind 
with those which we are undergoing now. Why should I quarrel 
with the peasant because on certain points he feels and thinks 
differently from what I do ? There are other essential points 
on which we may feel eternally at one with him, — probity and 
charity." 

Another generation of peasants had grown up since 
that first revolutionary generation of her youth, and 
equality, as its reign proceeded, had not deteriorated 
but improved them. 

"They have advanced greatly in self-respect and well-being, 
these peasants from twenty years old to forty ; they never ask 
for anything. When one meets them they no longer take off 
their hat. If they know you they come up to you and hold out 
their hand. All foreigners who stay with us are struck with 
their good bearing, with their amenity, and the simple, friendly, 
and polite ease of their behaviour. In presence of people whom 
they esteem they are, like their fathers, models of tact and polite- 
ness ; but they have more than that mere sentiment of equality 
which was all that their fathers had, — they have the idea of 
equality, and the determination to maintain it. This step 
upwards they owe to their having the franchise. Those who 
would fain treat them as creatures of a lower order dare not 
now show this disposition to their face ; it would not be pleasant." 

VOL. IV. S 



258 MIXED ESSAYS. [ix. 

Mr. Hamerton's interesting book about French life 
has much, I think, to confirm this account of the 
French peasant. What I have seen of France myself 
(and I have seen something) is fully in agreement 
with it. Of a civilisation and an equality which 
makes the peasant thus human, gives to the bulk of 
the people well-being, probity, charity, self-respect, 
tact, and good manners, let us pardon Madame Sand 
if she feels and speaks enthusiastically. Some little 
variation on our own eternal trio of Barbarians, 
Philistines, Populace, or on the eternal solo of Philis- 
tinism among our brethren of the United States and 
the Colonies, is surely permissible. 

Where one is more inclined to differ from Madame 
Sand is in her estimate of her Eepublican friends of 
the educated classes. They may stand, she says, for 
the genius and the soul of France ; they represent its 
" exalted imagination and profound sensibility," while 
the peasant represents its humble, sound, indispensable 
body. Her proUgd, the peasant, is much ruder with 
those eloquent gentlemen, and has his own name for 
one and all of them, Vavocat, by which he means to 
convey his belief that words are more to be looked 
for from that quarter than seriousness and profit. It 
seems to me by no means certain but that the peasant 
is in the right. 

George Sand herself has said admirable things of 
these friends of hers ; of their want of patience, temper, 
wisdom ; of their " vague and violent way of talking ;" 
of their interminable flow of " stimulating phrases, 
cold as death." Her own place is of course with the 
party and propaganda of organic change. But George 
Sand felt the poetry of the past ; she had no hatreds ; 
the furies, the follies, the self-deceptions of secularist 
and revolutionist fanatics filled her with dismay. 
They are indeed the great danger of France, and it is 



IX.] GEORGE SAND. 259 

amongst the educated and articulate classes of France 
that they prevail. If the educated and articulate 
classes in France were as sound in their way as the 
inarticulate peasant is in his, France would present a 
different spectacle. Not "imagination and sensibility" 
are so much required from the educated classes of 
France, as simpler, more serious views of life ; a know- 
ledge how great a part conduct (if M. Challemel-Lacour 
will allow me to say so) fills in it ; a better example. 
The few who say this, such as Madame Sand among 
the dead, and M. Renan among the living, perhaps 
awaken, on that account, amongst quiet observers at 
a distance, all the more sympathy ; but in France 
they are isolated. 

All the later work of George Sand, however, all 
her hope of genuine social renovation, take the simple 
and serious ground so necessary. " The cure for us 
is far more simple than we will believe. All the better 
natures amongst us see it and feel it. It is a good 
direction given by ourselves to our hearts and con- 
sciences ; — une bonne direction donnSe par nous-mimes a 
nos coeurs et cc nos consciences. These are among the last 
words of her Journal of 1870. 

Whether or not the number of George Sand's 
works, — always fresh, always attractive, but poured 
out too lavishly and rapidly, — is likely to prove a 
hindrance to her fame, I do not care to consider. 
Posterity, alarmed at the way in which its literary 
baggage grows upon it, always seeks to leave behind 
it as much as it can, as much as it dares, — everything 
but masterpieces. But the immense vibration of 
George Sand's voice upon the ear of Europe will not 
soon die away. Her passions and her errors have 
been abundantly talked of. She left them behind 
her, and men's memory of her will leave them behind 



260 MIXED ESSAYS. [ix. 

also. There will remain of her to mankind the sense 
of benefit and stimulus from the passage upon earth 
of that large and frank nature, of that large and pure 
utterance — the large utterance of the early gods. There 
will remain an admiring and ever widening report of 
that great and ingenuous soul, simple, affectionate, 
without vanity, without pedantry, human, equitable, 
patient, kind. She believed herself, she said, "to be 
in sympathy, across time and space, with a multitude 
of honest wills which interrogate their conscience and 
try to put themselves in accord with it." This chain 
of sympathy will extend more and more. 

It is silent, that eloquent voice ! it is sunk, that 
noble, that speaking head ! we sum up, as we best 
can, what she said to us, and we bid her adieu. From 
many hearts in many lands a troop of tender and 
grateful regrets converge towards her humble church- 
yard in Berry. Let them be joined by these words 
of sad homage from one of a nation which she esteemed, 
and which knew her very little and very ill. Her 
guiding thought, the guiding thought which she did 
her best to make ours too, "the sentiment of the 
ideal life, which is none other than man's normal life 
as we shall one day know it," is in harmony with 
words and promises familiar to that sacred place 
where she lies. Exspectat resurrectionem mortuorumy et 
vitam venturi sceculi 



t 



lEISH ESSAYS 

AND OTHERS 



PREFACE TO IRISH ESSAYS. 



The Essays whicli make the chief part of this volume 
have all appeared during the last year or two in well- 
known periodicals. The Prefaces which follow at 
the end were pubHshed in 1853 and 1854 as prefaces 
to my Poems, and have not been reprinted since. 
Some of the readers of my poetry have expressed a 
wish for their reappearance, and with that wish I 
here comply. Exactly as they stand, I should not 
have written them now ; but perhaps they are none 
the worse on that account. 

The three essays regarding Ireland which com- 
mence the present volume, and which give it its title, 
were received with no great favour when they 
appeared, and will probably be received with no 
great favour now. Practical politicians and men of 
the world are apt rather to resent the incursion of a 
man of letters into the field of politics; he is, in 
truth, not on his own ground there, and is in peculiar 
danger of talking at random. No one feels this more 
than I do. Nevertheless I have set in the front of 
this volume the essays on Irish affairs. If I • am 
asked why, I should be disposed to answer that I am 
curious to know how they wiU look ten years hence, 
if any one happens then to turn to them. 

English people keep asking themselves what we 



264 PREFACE. 

ought to do about Ireland. The great contention of 
these essays is, that in order to attach Ireland to us 
solidly, English people have not only to do something 
different from what they have done hitherto, they 
have also to he something different from what they 
have been hitherto. As a whole, as a community, 
they have to acquire a larger and sweeter temper, a 
larger and more lucid mind. And this is indeed no 
light task, yet it is the capital task now appointed to 
us, and our safety depends on our accomplishing it : 
to he something different, much more, even, than to 
do something different. 

I have enquired how far the Irish Land Act 
seemed likely, to a fair and dispassionate observer, to 
attach Ireland to us, to prove healing. It was easy 
to see reasons for thinking beforehand that it would 
not prove healing. Now that it is in operation, it is 
easy to see reasons for thinking so still. At the 
present moment one especial aspect of the matter 
can hardly fail to catch any clear-sighted man's 
attention. No one can deny that the Act seems 
likely to have a very large and far-reaching effect. 
But neither can it be denied, on the other hand, that 
leading Ministers declared their belief, which of 
course was entirely sincere, that the number of 
extortionate landlords in Ireland was inconsiderable, 
and that the general reduction of rents in Ireland 
would be inconsiderable. But it turns out that 
probably the general reduction of rents in Ireland, 
through the operation of the Land Courts fixing a 
judicial rent, will, on the contrary, be very con- 
siderable. Most certainly the inference of the people 
of Ireland will be that the number of extortionate 
landlords, also, was in fact very considerable. But 
this was just the contention of the people of Ireland. 
The Government, however, did not admit its truth, 



PEEFACE. 265 

and instituted the Land Courts without expecting 
that they would bring about any radical and universal 
change. If, therefore, they do bring about such a 
change, what, even though the Irish tenants profit 
by it, will be their gratitude to the Government? 
They will say that the English Government has done 
them a service without intending it, and without 
understanding and acknowledging the justice of their 
case. But so strong was the justice of their case, 
they wdll say, that it victoriously established itself as 
soon as the English Government, not dreaming of 
any such result, gave them a tribunal for determining 
a fair rent. 

It seems to me impossible not to see this, if one 
does not either shut one's eyes or turn them another 
way. We shall have brought about a radical change, 
we shall have established by law a divided ownership 
full of critical consequences, we shall have disturbed 
the accepted and ordinary constitutive characters of 
property, — and we shall get little or no gratitude for 
it ; we shall be said to have done it without intending 
it. Our measure is not likely, therefore, of itself to 
avail to win the affections of the Irish people to us 
and to heal their estrangement. Yet to make a 
radical change without doing this, opens no good 
prospect for the future. To break down the land- 
lords in Ireland, as we have already broken down 
the Protestant Church there, is merely to complete 
the destruction of the modus Vivendi hitherto existing 
for society in that country ; a most imperfect modus 
Vivendi indeed, but the only one practically attained 
there up to this time as a substitute for anarchj^ 
Simply to leave to the Irish people the free and 
entire disposal of their own affairs is recommended 
by some counsellors as the one safe solution of the 
Irish difficulty. But the safety of this solution 



266 PREFACE. 

depends upon the state and dispositions of the 
people to whom we apply it. May not a people be 
in such a state that Shakespeare's words hold true of 
it— - 

"... Your affections are 

A sick man's appetite, who desires most that 

Which would increase his evil ?" 

And may it not be affirmed, that if ever those words 
seemed true of any people, they seem true of the 
Irish at this hour 1 

To heal the estrangement between Ireland and 
England is what is needed above all things, and I 
cannot say that the Land Act appears to me to have 
in itself the elements for healing it. Nor can I see 
the use of pretending to find them in it if they are 
not really there. Nothing, indeed, coald be more 
absurd than for irresponsible people to press seriously 
their fancy solutions, though they may properly 
enough throw them out, on a suitable occasion, for 
purposes of discussion and illustration. Nothing, 
moreover, is further from my thoughts, in what is 
here said, than to find fault with the responsible 
Government, which has to provide not a fancy 
solution for difficulties, but a solution which may be 
put in practice. I know that it was as impossible to 
go on governing Ireland by means of the landlords 
as by means of the Protestant Church. I am ready 
to admit that the Government, the power and purchase 
Sit their disposal being what it is, could not well but 
have had recourse to some such measure as the Land 
Act. I think, even, as I have said in the following 
pages, that the Land Act of the Government, with 
what it does and what it gives the power of doing, 
is probably quite capable of satisfying the Irish 
people as a Land Act, if a certain other indispensable 
condition is complied with. But this condition the 



PREFACE. 267 

Land Act will not of itself realise. The indispensable 
condition is, that England and English civilisation 
shall become more attractive ; or, as I began by 
saying, that we should not only do to Ireland some- 
thing different from what we have done hitherto, 
but should also he. something different. On this need 
of a changed and more attractive power in English 
civilisation almost all the essays in the present volume, 
and not alone those dealing directly with Ireland, 
will be found to insist. 

The barren logomachies of Plato's Thecetetus are 
relieved by half-a-dozen immortal pages, and among 
them are those in which is described the helplessness of 
the philosopher in the ways of the world, the helpless- 
ness of the man of the world in a spiritual crisis. The 
philosopher Thales in the ditch had been an easy 
and a frequent subject for merriment ; it was reserved 
for Plato to amuse himself with the practical politician 
and man of the world in a spiritual crisis. Mr. 
Jowett is uncommonly happy in his translation of 
Plato's account of the man of the world, at such a 
crisis, "drawn into the upper air," having to "get 
himself out of his commonplaces to the consideration 
of government and of human happiness and misery 
in general, — what they are, and how a man is to 
attain the one and avoid the other." " Then, indeed," 
says Plato, " when that narrow, vain, little practical 
mind is called to account about all this, he gives the 
philosopher his revenge. For, dizzied by the height 
at which he is hanging, whence he looks into space 
which is a strange experience to him, he being dis- 
mayed and lost and stammering out broken words is 
laughed at, not by Thracian handmaidens such as 
laughed at Thales, or by any other uneducated persons, 
for they have no eye for the situation, but by every 
man who has been brought up as a true freeman." 



268 PEEFACE. 

Our practical politicians and men of the world, 
carried up by the course of time and change into a 
new air, and still ruefully trying there to gasp out 
their formulas, such as "Freedom of contract" or 
''The Liberal party has emphatically condemned 
religious endowment," or " Our traditional, existing, 
social arrangments," could not be better hit off. 
The man of the world, with his utter astonishment 
that the Irish tenants should stop the hunting, when 
the hunting " caused the noble master of the hounds 
to spend among them ten thousand a year!", the 
man of the world, with his mournful and incessant 
cries of " Eevolution !" Yes, we are in a revolution; 
" a revolution," as the late Duke of Wellington said, 
" by due course of law." And one of the features of it 
is, that the Irish tenants prefer to stop the hunting of 
those whom they regard as a set of aliens encamped 
amongst them for sporting purposes, who have in 
the past treated them and spoken to them as if 
they were slaves, and who are disposed, many of 
them, to treat them and speak to them as if they 
were slaves still, — the Irish people had rather stop 
this hunting, than profit by an expenditure upon it 
to the tune of ten thousand a year. The man of the 
world has had and has one formula for attaching 
neighbours and tenants to us, and one only, — expen- 
diture. And now he is " drawn into upper air," and 
has to hear such new and strange formulas as this, 
for example, of the most charming of French 
moralists : — Pour gagner Vhumanite^ il faut lui plaire ; 
pour lui plaire, il faut Ure air^iaUe. Or, if the man of 
the Avorld can stand Holy Writ, let him hear the 
Psalmist : — " Mansueti possidehunt terram, the gentle 
shall possess the earth." 

Indeed we are at the end of a period, and always 
at the end of a period the word goes forth : " Now 



PREFACE. 269 

is the judgment of this world." The "traditional, 
existing, social arrangements," which satisfied before, 
satisfy no longer ; the conventions and phrases, 
which once passed without question, are challenged. 
That saying of the saints comes to be fulfilled : 
Peribit Mum quod non est ex Deo ortum. Each people 
has its own periods of national life, with their own 
characters. The period which is now ending for 
England is that which began, when, after the sensuous 
tumult of the Eenascence, Catholicism being dis- 
credited and gone, our serious nation desired, as had 
been foretold, " to see one of the days of the Son of 
Man and did not see it;" but men said to them, 
See here or See there, and they went after the blind 
guides and followed the false direction ; and the 
actual civilisation of England and of America is the 
result. A civilisation with many virtues ! but with- 
out lucidity of mind, and without largeness of temper. 
And now we English, at any rate, have to acquire 
them, and to learn the necessity for us "to live," as 
Emerson says, "from a greater depth of being." 
The sages and the saints alike have always preached 
this necessity ; the so-called practical people and men 
of the world have always derided it. In the present 
collapse of their wisdom, we ought to find it less 
hard to rate their stock ideas and stock phrases, 
their claptrap and their catchwords, at their proper 
value, and to cast in pur lot boldly with the sages 
and with the saints. Sine ut mortui sepeliant mortuos 
suos, sed tu vade adnuntia regnum Dei. 



CONTENTS. 



I. The Incompatibles 
II. An Unregarded Irish Grievance 

III. UCCE, CONVERTIMUR AD GENTES 

IV. The Future of Liberalism . 
V. A Speech at Eton 

VI. The French Play in London 
VII. Copyright 
VIII. Prefaces to Poems 



PAGE 

273 
334 
354 
378 
409 
430 
458 
486 



I. 

THE mCOMPATIBLES. 



The Irish Land Bill has not yet, at the moment 
when I write this, made its appearance. No one is 
very eager, I suppose, to read more about the Irish 
Land Bill while we do not yet know what the Bill 
will be. Besides, and above all, no one under any 
circumstances, perhaps, can much care to read what 
an insignificant person, and one who has no special 
connection with Ireland, may have to say about the 
grave and sad affairs of that country. 

But even the most insignificant Englishman, and 
the least connected with Ireland and things Irish, 
has a deep concern, surely, in the present temper and 
action of the Irish people towards England, and must 
be impelled to seek for the real explanation of them. 
We find ourselves, — though conscious, as we assure 
one another, of nothing but goodwill to all the world, 
— we find ourselves the object of a glowing, fierce, 
unexplained hatred on the part of the Irish people. 
" The Liberal Ministry resolved," said one of our 
leading Liberal statesmen a few years ago, when the 
Irish Church Establishment was abolished, "the 
Liberal Ministry resolved to knit the hearts of the 

VOL. IV. T 



274 IRISH ESSAYS. [i. 

empire into one harmonious concord, and knitted 
they were accordingly." " Knitted? indeed ! The 
Irish people send members to our Parliament, whose 
great recommendation with their constituencies is, 
says Miss Charlotte O'Brien, that they are wolves 
ready to fly at the throat of England ; and more and 
more of these wolves, we are told, are likely to be 
sent over to us. These wolves ravin and destroy in 
the most savage and mortifying way ; they obstruct 
our business, lacerate our good name, deface our 
dignity, make our cherished fashions of government 
impossible and ridiculous. And then come eloquent 
rhetoricians, startling us with the prediction that 
Ireland will have either to be governed in future 
despotically, or to be given up. Even more alarming 
are certain grave and serious observers, who will not 
leave us even the cold comfort of the rhetorician's 
alternative, but declare that Ireland is irresistibly 
drifting to a separation from us, and to an unhappy 
separation ; — a separation which will bring confusion 
and misery to Ireland, danger to us. 

For my part, I am entirely indisposed to believe 
the eloquent rhetoricians who tell us that Ireland 
must either be governed for the future as a Crown 
colony or must be given up. I am also entirely 
indisposed to believe the despondent observers 
who tell us that Ireland is fatally and irresistibly 
drifting to a separation, and a miserable separation, 
from England. I no more believe the eloquent 
rhetoricians than I should believe them if they 
prophesied to me that Scotland, Wales, or Cornwall 
would have either to be governed as Crown colonies 
for the future, or to be given up. I no more believe 
the despondent observers than I should beHeve them 
if they assured me that Scotland, Wales, or Cornwall 
were fatally and irresistibly drifting to a miserable 



I 



I.] THE INCOMPATIBLES. 275 

separation from England. No doubt Ireland presents 
many and great difficulties, and England has many 
and great faults and shortcomings. But after all the 
English people, with " its ancient and inbred piety, 
integrity, good nature, and good humour," has con- 
siderable merits, and has done considerable things 
in the world. In presence of such terrifying pre- 
dictions and assurances as those which I have been 
just quoting, it becomes right and necessary to say so. 
I refuse to believe that such a people is unequal to 
the task of blending Ireland with itself in the same 
way that Scotland, Wales, and Cornwall are blended 
with us, if it sets about the task seriously. 

True, there are difficulties. One of the greatest 
is to be found in our English habit of adopting a 
conventional account of things, satisfying our own 
minds with it, and then imagining that it will satisfy 
other people's minds also, and may really be relied 
on. Goethe, that sagest of critics, and moreover a 
great lover and admirer of England, noted this fault 
in us. *' It is good in the English," says he, " that 
they are always for being practical in their dealings 
with things ; aher sie sind Fedanfen, — but they are 
pedants." The pedant is he who is governed by 
phrases and does not get to the reality of things. 
Elsewhere Goethe attributes this want of insight in 
the English, their acceptance of phrase and conven- 
tion, and their trust in these, — their pedantry in 
short, — to the habits of our public life, and to the 
reign amongst us of party spirit and party formulas. 
Burke supplies a remarkable confirmation of this 
account of the matter, when he complains of Parlia- 
ment as being a place where it is " the business of a 
Minister still further to contract the narroAvness of 
men's ideas, to confirm inveterate prejudices, to 
inflame vulgar passions, and to abet all sorts of 



276 lEISH ESSAYS. [l. 

popular absurdities." The true explanation of any 
matter is therefore seldom come at by uh, but we 
rest in that account of things which it suits'^" :r class, 
our party, our leaders, to adopt and to rendet "current. 
We adopt a version of things, because we choose, not 
because it really represents them ; and we expect it 
to hold good because we wish that it may. 

But "it is not your fond desire or mine," says 
Burke again, " that can alter the nature of things ; 
by contending against which, what have we got, or 
shall ever get, but defeat and shame f These words 
of Burke should be laid to heart by us. We shall 
solve at last, I hope and believe, the difficulty which 
the state of Ireland presents to us. But we shall 
never solve it without first understanding it ; and we 
shall never understand it while we pedantically accept 
whatever accounts of it happen to pass current with 
our class, or party, or leaders, and to be recommended 
by our fond desire and theirs. We must see the 
matter as it really stands ; we must cease to ignore, 
and to try to set aside, the nature of things ; " by 
contending against which, what have we got, or shall 
ever get, but defeat and shame V 

Pedantry and conventionality, therefore, are dan- 
gerous when we are in difficulties ; and our habits 
of class and party action, and our ways of public 
discussion, tend to encourage pedantry and conven- 
tionality in us. Now there are insignificant people, 
detached from classes and parties and their great 
movements, people unclassed and unconsidered, but 
who yet are lovers of their country, and lovers of the 
humane life and of civilisation, and therefore griev- 
ously distressed at the condition in which they see 
Ireland and Irish sentiment at the present time, and 
appalled at the prophecies they hear of the turn 
which things in Ireland must certainly take. Such 



I.] THE INCOMPATIBLES. 277 

persons, — who after all, perhaps, are not so very few 
in num^sr, — may well desire to talk the case over 
one to . nother in their own quiet and simple way, 
withou pedantry and conventionality, admitting 
unchallenged none of the phrases with which classes 
and parties are apt to settle matters, resolving to 
look things full in the face and let them stand for 
what they really are ; in order that they may ascer- 
tain whether there is any chance of comfort in store, 
or whether things are really as black and hopeless as 
we are told. Let us perish in the light, at any rate 
(if perish we must), and not in a cloud of pedantry ; 
let us look fairly into that incompatibility, alleged to 
be incurable, between us and the Irish nation. 

Even to talk of the people inhabiting an island 
quite near to us, and which we have governed ever 
since the twelfth century, as a distinct nation from 
ourselves, ought to seem strange and absurd to us ; 
— as strange and absurd as to talk of the people 
inhabiting Brittany as a distinct nation from the 
French. However, we know but too well that the 
Irish consider themselves a distinct nation from us, 
and that some of their leaders, upon this ground, 
claim for them a parliament, and even an army and 
navy and a diplomacy, separate and distinct from 
ours. And this, again, ought to seem as strange and 
absurd as for Scotland or Wales or Cornwall to claim 
a parliament, an army and navy, and a diplomacy, 
distinct from ours ; or as for Brittany or Provence to 
claim a parliament, an army and navy, and a diplo- 
macy, distinct from those of France. However, it is a 
fact that for Ireland such claims are made, while for 
Scotland, Wales, Cornwall, Brittany, and Provence, 
they are not. That is because Scotland, Wales, and 
Cornwall are really blended in national feeling with 



278 IKISH ESSAYS. [i. 

US, and Brittany and Provence with the rest of 
France. And it is well that people should come to 
understand and feel that it is quite incumbent on a 
nation to have its parts blended together in a com- 
mon national feeling; and that there is insecurity, 
there is reason for mortification and humiliation, if 
they are not. At last this much, at least, has been 
borne in upon the mind of the general public in 
England, which for a long while troubled itself not 
at all about the matter, — that it is a ground of 
insecurity to us, and a cause of mortification and 
humiliation, that we have so completely failed to 
attach Ireland. I remember when I was visiting 
schools in Alsace twenty years ago, I noticed a num- 
ber of points in which questions of language and 
religion seemed to me likely to raise irritation against 
the French government, and to call forth in the 
people of Alsace the sense of their separate nation- 
ality. Yet all such irritating points were smoothed 
down by the power of a common national feeling 
with France ; and we all know how deeply German 
and Protestant Alsace regretted, and still regrets, the 
loss of her connection with France Celtic and Catholic. 
Undoubtedly this does great honour to French 
civilisation and to its attractive forces. We, on the 
other hand, Germanic and Protestant England, we 
have utterly failed to attach Celtic and Catholic 
Ireland, although our language prevails there, and 
although we have no great counter-nationality on the 
borders of Ireland to compete with us for the 
possession of her affections, as the French had 
Germany on the borders- of Alsace. 

England holds Ireland, say the Irish, by means of 
conquest and confiscation. But almost all countries 
have undergone conquest and confiscation ; and 
almost all property, if we go back far enough, has its 



I.] THE INCOMPATIBLES. 279 

source in these violent proceedings. After such 
proceedings, however, people go about their daily 
business, gradually things settle down, there is well- 
being and tolerable justice, prescription arises, and 
nobody talks about conquest and confiscation any 
more. The Frankish conquest of France, the Nor- 
man conquest of England, came in this way, with 
time, to be no longer talked of, to be no longer even 
thought of. 

The seizure of Strasburg by France is an event 
belonging to modern history. It was a violent and 
scandalous act. But it has long ago ceased to stir 
resentment in a single Alsatian bosom. On the 
other hand, the English conquest of Ireland took 
place little more than a century after the Norman 
conquest of England. But in Ireland it did not 
happen that people went about their daily business, 
that their condition improved, that things settled 
down, that the country became peaceful and pros- 
perous, and that gradually all remembrance of con- 
quest and confiscation died out. On the contrary, 
the conquest had again and again to be renewed; 
the sense of prescription, the true security of all pro- 
perty, never arose. The angry memory of conquest 
and confiscation, the ardour for revolt against them, 
have continued, therefore, to irritate and inflame 
men's minds. They irritate and inflame them still ; 
the present relations between landlord and tenant 
in Ireland offer only too much proof of it. 

But this is only saying over again that England 

has failed to attach Ireland. We must ask, then, 

what it is which makes things, after a conquest, 

settle peaceably down, what makes a sense of pre- 

i ^cription arise, what makes property secure and 

• blends the conquered people into one nation with 

t the conquerors. Certainly we must put, as one of 



280 IKISH ESSAYS. [r. 

the first and chief causes, general well-being. Never 
mind how misery arises, whether by the fault of the 
conquered or by the fault of the conqueror, its very 
existence prevents the solid settlement of things, 
prevents the dying out of desires for revolt and 
change. 

Now, let us consult the testimonies from Eliza- 
beth's reign, when the middle age had ended and 
the modern age had begun, down to the present 
time. First we have this picture of Irish misery by 
the poet Spenser : — 

" Out of every corner of the woods and glens they came 
creeping forth upon their hands, for their legs could not bear 
them ; they looked like anatomies of death, they spake like 
ghosts crying out of their graves ; they did eat the dead car- 
rions, happy where they could find them, yea, and one another 
soon after, insomuch as the very carcases they spared not to 
scrape out of their graves ; and if they found a plot of water- 
cresses or shamrocks there, they flocked as to a feast for the 
time, yet not able long to continue these withal ; that in short 
there were none almost left. " 



Then, a hundred and forty years later, we have 
another picture of Irish misery, a picture drawn by 
the terrible hand of Swift. He describes "the 
miserable dress and diet and dwelling of the people, 
the general desolation in most parts of the kingdom." 
He says : — 

"Some persons of a desponding spirit are in great concern 
about the aged, diseased, or maimed poor ; but I am not in the 
least pain upon the matter, because it is very well known that 
they are every day dying and- rotting by cold and famine, and 
filth and vermin, as fast as can be reasonably expected. " 

And again : — 

*' I confess myself to be touched with a very sensible pleasure 
when I hear of a mortality in any country parish or village, 



I.] THE INCOMPATIBLES. 281 

where the wretches are forced' to pay, for a filthy cabin and two 
ridges of potatoes, treble the worth ; brought up to steal or 
beg, for want of work ; to whom death would be the best thing 
to be Avished for, on account both of themselves and the public." 

Next and finally, after the lapse of a hundred 
and fifty years more, coming down to our own day, 
we have this sentence, strong and short, from Colonel 
Gordon : — 

" The state of our fellow-countrymen in the south-west of 
Ireland is worse than that of any people in the world, — let 
alone Europe." 

I say, where there is this misery going on for cen- 
turies after a conquest, acquiescence in the conquest 
cannot take place ; — a sense of permanent settlement 
and of the possessors' prescriptive title to their pro- 
perty cannot spring up, the conquered cannot blend 
themselves into one nation with their conquerors. 

English opinion, indeed, attributes Irish misery to 
the faults of the Irish themselves, to their insubordin- 
ation, to their idleness and improvidence, and to their 
Popish religion. But however the misery arises, 
there cannot, as I have already said, be fusion, there 
cannot be forgetfulness of past violences and con- 
fiscations, while the misery lasts. Still, if the misery 
is due to the faults of the Irish, it is in curing faults 
on their side that we have to seek the remedy, not 
in curing faults of our own. 

Undoubtedly the native Irish have the faults 
which we commonly attribute to them. Un- 
doubtedly those Anglo- Irish, who lead them, too 
often superadd to the passionate unreason of the 
natives our own domestic hardness and narrow 
doggedness, and the whole makes a very unpleasant 
mixture. Undoubtedly it is not agreeable to have 
people ofi'ering to fly like wolves at your throat, — 



282 IRISH ESSAYS. [l. 

these people knowing, at the same time, that you 
will not put out your full strength against them, and 
covering you on that account with all the more 
menace and contumely. England must often enough 
be disposed to answer such assailants gruffly, to vow 
that she will silence them once for all, and to ejaculate, 
as Caesar did when he threatened to silence the 
tribune Metellus : " And when I say this, young man, 
to say it is more trouble to me than to do it." 
Were there ever people, indeed, who so aggravated 
their own difficulties as the Irish people, so increased 
the labour and sorrow of him who toils to find a 
remedy for their ills ? " Always ready to react 
against the despotism of fact," — so their best friend ^ 
among their French kinsmen describes them. "Poor 
brainsick creatures ! " — a sterner critic ^ among these 
kinsmen says, — " poor brainsick creatures, distraught 
with misery and incurable ignorance ! by inflaming 
themselves against the English connection, by refusing 
to blend their blood, their habits, their hopes, with 
those of the leading country, they are preparing for 
themselves a more miserable future than that of any 
other people in Europe." It seems as if this poor 
Celtic people were bent on making what one of its 
own poets has said of its heroes hold good for ever : 
"They went forth to the war, hut they always felV^ 

All this may be very true. But still we ought to 
know whether the faults and misery of the Irish are 
due solely to themselves, and all we can do is to 
hold down the poor brainsick creatures and punish 
them, which, to say the truth, we have done freely 
enough in the past ; or whether their state is due, 
either in whole or in large part, to courses followed 
by ourselves, and not even yet discontinued by us 
entirely, in which it may be possible to make a change. 
^ M. Henri Martin. ^ A writer in the Eipubliqice Fran^aise. 



I.] THE INCOMPATIBLES. 283 

Now, I imagine myself to be at present talking 
quietly to open-minded, unprejudiced, simple people, 
free from class spirit and party spirit, resolved to 
forswear self-delusion and make believe, not to be 
pedants, but to see things as they really are. Such 
people will surely be most anxious, just as I too was 
anxious, on this question of the rights and the wrongs 
in England's dealings with Ireland, to put themselves 
in good hands. And if they find a guide whom they 
can thoroughly trust they will not be restive or per- 
verse with him ; they will admit his authority frankly. 
Now, Edmund Burke is here a guide whom we can 
thus trust. Burke is, it seems to me, the greatest of 
English statesmen in this sense, at any rate : that he 
is the only one who traces the reason of things in 
politics and who enables us to trace it too. Com- 
pared with him, Fox is a brilliant and generous 
schoolboy, and Pitt is a schoolboy with a gift (such 
as even at school not unfrequently comes out) for 
direction and government. Burke was, moreover, 
a great conservative statesman, — conservative in the 
best sense. On the French Eevolution his utterances 
are not entirely those of the Burke of the best time, 
of the Burke of the American War. He was abun- 
dantly wise in condemning the crudity and tyrannous- 
ness of the revolutionary spirit. Still, there has to 
be added to Burke's picture of the Eevolution a side 
which he himself does not furnish; we ought to 
supplement him, as we read him, and sometimes 
to correct him. But on Ireland, which he knew 
thoroughly, he was always the Burke of the best 
time ; he never varied j his hatred of Jacobinism did 
not here make him go back one hair's -breadth. "I 
am of the same opinion," he writes in 1797 (the year 
in which he died), "to my last breath, which I 
entertained when my faculties were at the best." 



284 IRISH ESSAYS. [i. 

Mr. John Morley's admirable biography has inter- 
ested all of us afresh in Burke's life and genius ; the 
Irish questions which now press upon us should 
make us seek out and read every essay, letter, and 
speech of Burke on the subject of Ireland. 

Burke is clear in the opinion that down to the 
end of his life, at any rate, Irish misery and discon- 
tent have been due more to English misgovernment 
and injustice than to Irish faults. " We found the 
people heretics and idolaters," he says ; "' we have, 
by way of improving their condition, rendered them 
slaves and beggars ; they remain in all the misfor- 
tune of their old errors, and all the superadded 
misery of their recent punishment." It is often 
alleged in England that the repeated confiscations of 
Irish lands and even the Popery Laws themselves, 
were necessitated by the rebelliousness and intract- 
ableness of the Irish themselves ; the country could 
only be held down for England by a Protestant 
garrison, and through these severe means. Burke 
dissipates this flattering illusion. Even the Penal 
Code itself, he says, even " the laws of that unparal- 
leled code of oppression, were manifestly the efl'ects 
of national hatred and scorn towards a conquered 
people, whom the victors delighted to trample upon, 
and were not at all afraid to provoke. They were not 
the effect of their fears, hut of their security. They who 
carried on this system looked to the irresistible 
force of Great Britain for their support in their acts 
of power. They were quite certain that no com- 
plaints of the natives would be heard on this side of 
the water with any other sentiments than those of 
contempt and indignation. In England, the double 
name of the complainant, Irish and Papist (it would 
be hard to say which singly was the most odious), 
shut up the hearts of every one against them. They 



I.] THE INCOMPATIBLES. 285 

were looked upon as a race of bigoted savages, who 
were a disgrace to human nature itself." 

And therefore, although Burke declared that 
''hitherto the plan for the government of Ireland 
has been to sacrifice the civil prosperity of the nation 
to its religious improvement," yet he declared, also, 
that " it is injustice and not a mistaken conscience, that 
has been the principle of persecution." That 
"melancholy and invidious title," he says, "the 
melancholy and unpleasant title of grantees of con- 
fiscation, is a favourite." The grantees do not even 
wish " to let Time draw his oblivious veil over the 
unpleasant modes by which lordships and demesnes 
have been acquired in theirs and almost in all other 
countries upon earth." On the contrary, "they in- 
form the public of Europe that their estates are 
made up of forfeitures and confiscations from the 
natives. They abandon all pretext of the general 
good of the community." The Popery Laws were 
but part of a system for enabling the grantees of 
confiscation to hold Ireland without blending with 
the natives or reconciling them. The object of those 
laws, and their effect, was " to reduce the Catholics 
of Ireland to a miserable populace, without property, 
without estimation, without education. They divided 
the nation into two distinct bodies, without common 
interest, sympathy, or connection. One of these 
branches was to possess all the franchises, all the 
property, all the education; the other was to be 
composed of drawers of water and cutters of turf for 
them." 

In short, the mass of the Irish people were kept 
without well-being and without justice. Now if 
well-being is a thing needed to make a conquered 
people one with its conquerors, so is justice, and so, 
also, is good treatment and kindness. Well might 



286 IRISH ESSAYS. [i. 

Burke adjure all concerned to "reflect upon the 
possible consequences of keeping, in the heart of your 
country, a bank of discontent every hour accumulating, 
upon which every description of seditious men may 
draw at pleasure." Well might he austerely answer 
that worthy Philistine at Bristol who remonstrated 
with them against making concessions to the Irish : 
" Sir, it is proper to inform you that our measures 
must he healing.'"'^ Well might he add: "Their 
temper, too, must be managed, and their good 
affections cultivated." Burke hated Jacobinism, the 
angry and premature destruction of the existing order 
of things, even more than he hated Protestant 
ascendency. But this, he remarked, led straight to 
the other. " If men are kept as being no better than 
half citizens for any length of time, they will be made 
whole Jacobins." 

In 1797 this great man died, without having con- 
vinced Parliament or the nation of truths which he 
himself saw so clearly, and had seen all his life. In 
his very last years, while he was being hailed as the 
grand defender of thrones and altars, while George 
the Third thanked him for his Reflections on the French 
Revolution, and while that book was lying on the table 
of every great house and every parsonage in England, 
Burke writes that as regards Ireland he is absolutely 
without influence, and that, if any Irish official were 
known to share his views, such a man would probably 
be dismissed. What an illustration of the truth of 
Goethe's criticism on us: "Their Parliamentary 
parties are great opposing forces which paralyse one 
another, and where the superior insight of an 
individual can hardly break through ! " 

Burke died three years before the Union. He 
left behind him two warnings, both of them full of 
^ The italics are Burke's own. 



I.] THE INCOMPATIBLES. 287 

truth, full of gravity. One is, that concessions, 
sufficient if given in good time and at a particular 
conjuncture of events, become insufficient if deferred. 
The other is, that concessions, extorted from em- 
barrassment and fear, produce no gratitude, and allay 
no resentment. " God forbid," he cries, " that our 
conduct should demonstrate to the world that Great 
Britain can in no instance whatsoever be brought to 
a sense of rational and equitable policy, but by 
coercion and force of arms." 

Burke thought, as every sane man must think, 
"connection between Great Britain and Ireland 
essential to the welfare of both." He was for a 
Union. But he doubted whether the particular time 
of the closing years of the last century was favourable 
for a Union. Mr. Lecky, in his delightful book. The 
Leaders of Public Opinion in Ireland, expresses a like 
doubt. The restrictions on Irish trade had given to 
the Anglo-Irish and to the native Irish a joint interest, 
adverse to those restrictions ; they had acted together 
in this interest, they had acted together on behalf of 
Irish independence ; the beginnings of a common 
national feeling between them had sprung up. The 
Catholics had been admitted to vote for members of 
Parliament, and it seemed likely that they would soon 
be declared capable of sitting in Parliament. But 
the Union came, and imported into the settlement of 
that matter a new personage, our terrible friend the 
British Philistine. And for thirty years this per- 
sonage, of whose ideas George the Third was the 
faithful mouthpiece, delayed Catholic emancipation, 
which, without the Union, would probably have been 
granted much sooner. John Wesley wrote, Mr. 
Lecky tells us, against the withdrawal of the penal 
laws. At last, in 1829, the disabilities of Catholics 
were taken off, — but in dread of an insurrection. A 



288 IRISH ESSAYS. [i. 

wise man might at that moment well have recalled 
Burke's two warnings. What was done in 1829 
could not have the sufficiency which in 1800 it might 
have had ; what was yielded in dread of insurrection 
could not produce gratitude. 

Meanwhile Irish misery went on ; there were loud 
complaints of the "grantees of confiscation," the 
landlords. Ministers replied, that the conduct of 
many landlords was deplorable, and that absenteeism 
was a great evil, but that nothing could be done 
against them, and that the sufferers must put their 
hopes in " general sympathy." The people pullulated 
in the warm stream of their misery; famine and 
Fenianism appeared. Great further concessions have 
since been made ; — the abolition of tithes, the 
abolition of the Irish Church Establishment, the Land 
Act of 1870. But with respect to every one of them 
Burke's warnings hold good ; they were given too late 
to produce the effect which they might have produced 
earlier, and they seemed to be given not from a desire 
to do justice, but from the apprehension of danger. 
Finally, we have to-day in parts of Ireland the misery 
to which Colonel Gordon bears witness ; we have the 
widespread agitation respecting the land ; we have 
the Irish people, if not yet "whole Jacobins," as 
Burke said we were making them, at least in a fair 
way to become so. And to meet these things we 
have coercion and the promised Land Bill. 

For my part, I do not object, wherever I see dis- 
order, to see coercion applied to it. And in Ireland 
there has been, and there is, most serious disorder. 
I do not agree with the orators of popular meetings, 
and I do not agree with some Liberals with whom I 
agree in general, I do not agree with them in object- 
ing to apply coercion to Irish disorder, or to any 
other. Tumultuously doing what one likes is the 



I.] THE INCOMPATIBLES. 289 

ideal of the populace : it is not mine. True, con- 
cessions have often been wrung from governments 
only by the fear of tumults and disturbances, but it 
is an unsafe way of winning them, and concessions 
so won, as Burke has shown us, are never lucky. 
Unswerving firmness in repressing disorder is always 
a government's duty ; so, too, is unswerving firmness 
in redressing injustice. It will be said that we have 
often governments firm enough in repressing disorder, 
who, after repressing it, leave injustice still un- 
redressed. True ; but it is our business to train 
ourselves, and to train public opinion, to make 
governments do otherwise, and do better. It is our 
business to bring them, not to be irresolute in 
repressing disorder, but to be both resolute in 
repressing disorder, and resolute, also, in redressing 
injustice. 

" Sir, it is proper to inform you that our measures 
must he healing." Ireland has had injustice and ill- 
treatment from us ; measures are wanted which shall 
redress them and wipe out their memory, I do not 
yet know what the new Land Bill will be. But we 
have the Land Act of 1870 before our eyes, and we 
are told that proceeding a good deal farther upon the 
lines of that Act is what is intended. Will this be 
healing ? — that is the question, I confess that if one 
has no class or party interests to warp one, and if one 
is resolved not to be a pedant, but to look at things 
simply and naturally, it seems difficult to think so. 

The truth is, as every one who is honest with 
himself must perceive, — the truth is, what is most 
needed, in deahng with the land in Ireland, is to 
redress our injustice, and to make the Irish see that 
we are doing so. And the most effective way, surely, 
to do this is not to confer boons on all tenants, but 
to execute justice on bad landlords. Property is 

VOL. IV. U 



290 IRISH ESSAYS. [i. 

sacred, will be the instant reply ; the landlords, good 
or bad, have prescription in their favour. Property 
is sacred when it has prescription in its favour ; but 
the very point is, that in Ireland prescription has 
never properly arisen. There has been such lack of 
well-being and justice there, that things have never 
passed, — at least they have never throughout the 
whole length and breadth of Ireland passed, — out of 
their first violent, confiscatory stage. "I shall never 
praise either confiscations or counter -confiscations," 
says Burke. A wise man will not approve the 
violences of a time of confiscation; but, if things 
settle down, he would never think of proposing 
counter-confiscation as an atonement for those vio- 
lences. It is far better that things should settle down, 
and that the past should be forgotten^ But in Ireland 
things have not settled down ; and the harshness, 
vices, and neglect of many of the grantees of confisca- 
tion have been the main cause why they have not. 
" The law bears, and must bear," says Burke again, 
" with the vices and follies of men, until they actually 
strike at the root of order." In general, the vices 
and follies of individual owners of property are borne 
with, because they are scattered, single cases, and do 
not strike at the root of order. But in Ireland they 
represent a system which has made peace and pro- 
sperity impossible, and which strikes at the root of 
order. Some good landlords there always were in 
Ireland; as a class they are said to be now good, 
certainly there are some who are excellent. But 
there are not a few, also, who are still very bad ; and 
these keep alive in the Irish people the memory of 
old wrong, represent and continue to the Irish mind 
the old system. A government, by executing justice 
upon them, would declare that it breaks with that 
system, and founds a state of things in which the 



I.] THE INCOMPATIBLES. 291 

good owners of property, now endangered along with 
the bad, will be safe, in which a real sense of pre- 
scription can take root, in which general well-being 
and a general sense of good and just treatment, — 
that necessary condition precedent of Ireland's cheerful 
acquiescence in the English connection, — may become 
possible, and the country can settle down. Such a 
measure would be a truly Conservative one, and every 
landowner who does his duty would find his security 
in it and ought to wish for it. A Commission should 
draw up a list of offenders, and an Act of Parliament 
should expropriate them without scruple. 

English landowners start with horror at such a 
proposal ; but the truth is, in considering these ques- 
tions of property and land, they are pedants. They 
look without horror on the expropriation of the 
monastic orders by Henry the Eighth's Parliament, 
and many of them are at this very day great gainers 
by that transaction. Yet there is no reason at all 
why expropriating certain religious corporations, to 
give their lands to individuals, should not shock a 
man ; but expropriating certain individual owners, to 
sell their lands in such manner as the State may 
think advisable, should shock him so greatly. The 
estates of religious corporations, as such, are not, says 
the conservative Burke severely but truly, " in worse 
hands than estates to the like amount in the hands 
of this earl or that squire, although it may be true 
that so many dogs and horses are not kept by the 
religious." But it was alleged that many monastic 
establishments, by their irregularities and vices, were 
a cause of public harm, struck at the root of order. 
The same thing may most certainly be said of too 
many Irish landlords at this day, with their harsh- 
ness, vices, and neglect of duty. Eeason of State 
may be alleged for dealing with both. In the mode 



292 IRISH ESSAYS. [i. 

of dealing, there can be no parallel. The monks 
were expropriated wholesale, good as well as bad, 
with little or no compensation. Of the landlords it 
is proposed to expropriate only the worst, so as to 
found for the good ones security and prescription ; 
and the compensation assigned to the bad expro- 
priated landlords by the English Parliament is sure 
to be not insufficient, rather it will be too ample. 

For the confiscations of the lands of the native 
Irish themselves, from Elizabeth's time downwards, 
the plea of justification has been always this : the 
reason of State, the plea that the faults of the Irish 
possessor "struck at the root of order." Those con- 
fiscations were continuous and severe ; they were 
carried on both by armed force and by legal chicane ; 
they were in excess of what the reason of State, even 
at the time, seemed to fair men to require. "By 
English Acts of Parliament," says Burke, "forced 
upon two reluctant kings, the lands of Ireland were 
put up to a mean and scandalous auction in every 
goldsmith's shop in London; or chopped to pieces 
and cut into rations, to pay the soldiery of Cromwell." 
However, the justification was this, as I have said : 
the reason of State. The faults of the Irish possessor 
struck at the root of order. And if order and happi- 
ness had arisen under the new possessors, not a word 
more would ever have been heard about past confis- 
cations. But order and happiness have not arisen 
under them ; a great part of the Irish people is in a 
chronic state of misery, discontent, and smouldering 
insurrection. To reconquer and chastise them is 
easy ; but after you have chastised them, your eternal 
difficulty with them recommences. I pass by the 
suggestion that the Irish people should be entirely 
extirpated ; no one can make it seriously. They 
must be brought to order when they are disorderly ; 



I.] THE INCOMPATIBLES. 293 

but they must be brought, also, to acquiescence in 
the English connection by good and just treatment. 
Their acquiescence has been prevented by the vices, 
harshness, and neglect of the grantees of confiscation; 
and it never will arise, so long as there are many of 
these who prevent it by their vices, harshness, and 
neglect still. Order will never strike root. The 
very same reason of State holds good, therefore, for 
expropriating bad landlords, which held good in their 
predecessors' eyes, and in the eyes of English Parlia- 
ments, for expropriating the native Irish possessors. 

However, the expropriation of English or Anglo- 
Irish landlords is a thing from which English ministers 
Avill always avert their thoughts as long as they can, 
and so another remedy for Irish discontent has been 
hit upon. It has been suggested, as every one knows, 
by the Ulster custom. In Ireland, the landlord has 
not been in the habit of doing for his farms what a 
landlord does for his farms in England ; and this, 
too, undoubtedly sprang out of the old system of rule 
on the part of the grantees of confiscation as if they 
were lords and masters simply, and not men having 
a joint interest with the tenant. "In Ireland," says 
Burke, " the farms have neither dwelling-houses nor 
good offices j nor are the lands almost any^vhere pro- 
vided with fences and communications. The land- 
owner there never takes upon him, as it is usual in 
this kingdom, to supply all these conveniences, and 
to set down his tenant in what may be called a com- 
pletely furnished farm. If the tenant will not do it, 
it is never done." And if the tenant did it, what 
was done was still the property of the landlord, and 
the tenant lost the benefit of it by losing his farm. 
But in Ulster, where the tenants were a strong race 
and Protestants, there arose a custom of compensating 
them for their improvements, and letting them sell 



294 IRISH ESSAYS. [i. 

the value whicli by their improvements they had 
added to the property. But a bad landlord could 
set the custom at defiance ; so the Land Act of 1870 
regulated the custom, and gave the force of law to 
what had before possessed the force of custom only. 
And many people think that what ministers intend, 
is to develop considerably the principles and provi- 
sions of that Act, — so considerably, indeed, as to 
guarantee to the tenants fair rents, fixity of tenure, 
and free sale ; and to extend the operation of the 
Act, so developed, to the whole of Ireland. 

The new Bill is not yet before us j and I speak 
besides, as I well know and frankly avow, without 
special local knowledge of Irish affairs. But a scheme 
such as that which has been indicated has incon- 
veniences which must be manifest, surely, to every 
one who uses his common sense, and is not hindered 
from using it freely by the obligation not to do what 
would be really effective, but still to do something. 
Landowners hate parting with their land, it is true ; 
but it may be doubted whether for the landlord to 
assign a portion of land in absolute property to the 
tenant, in recompense for the improvements hitherto 
effected, and in future himself to undertake necessary 
improvements, as an English landlord does, would 
not be a better, safer, and more pacifying solution of 
tenant-right claims, than either the Act of 1870, or 
any Act proceeding upon the lines there laid down. 
For it is evident that, by such an Act, ownership and 
tenure will be made quite a different thing in Ireland 
from that which they are in England, and in countries 
of our sort of civilisation generally ; and this is surely 
a disadvantage. It is surely well to have plain, deep, 
common marks recognised everywhere, at least in all 
countries possessing a common civilisation, as charac- 
terising ownership and as characterising tenancy, and 



I.] THE INCOMPATIBLES. 295 

to introduce as little of novel and fanciful complica- 
tion here as possible. Above all this is desirable, one 
would think, with a people like the Irish, sanguine 
and imaginative, who, if they are told that tenancy 
means with them more than it means elsewhere, will 
be prone to make it mean yet more than you intend. 
It is surely a disadvantage, again, to put a formal 
compulsion on good landlords to do what they were 
accustomed to do willingly, and to deprive them of 
all freedom and credit in the transaction. And the 
bad landlord, the real creator of our difficulties, 
remains on the spot still, but partially tied and en- 
tirely irritated ; it mil be strange, indeed, if plenty 
of occasions of war do not still arise between him and 
his tenant, and prevent the growth of a sense of 
reconcilement, pacification, and prescription. 

However, there are many people who put their 
faith in the Land Act of 1870, properly developed, 
and extended to the whole of Ireland. Other people, 
again, put their faith in emigration, as the means of 
relieving the distressed districts, and that, they say, 
is all that is wanted. And if these remedies, either 
the Land Act singly, or emigration singly, or both of 
them together, prove to be sufficient, there is not a 
word more to be said. If Ireland settles down, if its 
present state of smothered revolt ceases, if misery 
goes out and well-being comes in, if a sense of the 
prescriptive right of the legal owner of land springs 
up, and a sense of acquiescence in the English con- 
nection, there is not a word more to be said. What 
abstracted people may devise in their study, or may 
say in their little companies when they come together, 
will not be regarded. Attention it will then, indeed, 
not require ; and it is never easy to procure attention 
for it, even when it requires attention. English 
people live in classes and parties, English statesmen 



296 IRISH ESSAYS. [i. 

think of classes and parties in whatever they do. 
Burke himself, as I have said, on this question of 
Ireland which he had so made his own, Burke at the 
height of his fame, when men went to consult him, 
we are told, " as an oracle of God," Burke himself, 
detached from party and class, had no influence in 
directing Irish matters, could eff'ect nothing. " You 
have formed," he writes to a friend in Ireland who 
was unwilling to believe this, " you have formed to 
my person a flattering, yet in truth a very erroneous 
opinion of my power with those who direct the public 
measures. I never have been directly or indirectly 
consulted about anything that is done." 

No, the English are pedants, and will proceed in the 
ways of pedantry as long as they possibly can. They 
will not ask themselves what really meets the wants 
of a case, but they will ask what may be done with- 
out ofi'ending the prejudices of their classes and 
parties, and then they will agree to say to one 
another and to the world that this is what really meets 
the wants of the case, and that it is the only thing 
to be done. And ministers will always be prone to 
avoid facing difficulty seriously, and yet to do some- 
thing and to put the best colour possible on that 
something; and so "still further to contract," as 
Burke says, '' the narrowness of men's ideas, to con- 
firm inveterate prejudices, and to abet all sorts of 
popular absurdities." But if a Land Act on the lines 
of that of 1870 fails to appease Ireland, or if emigra- 
tion fails to prove a sufficient remedy, then quiet 
people who have accustomed themselves to consider 
the thing without pedantry and prejudice, may have 
the consolation of knowing that there is still some- 
thing in reserve, still a resource which has not been 
tried, and which may be tried and may perhaps suc- 
ceed. Not only do we not exceed our duty towards 



I.] THE INCOMPATIBLES. 297 

Ireland in trying this resource, if necessary, but, until 
we try it, we have not even gone to the extent of our 
duty. And when rhetoricians who seek to startle us, 
or despondent persons who seek to lighten their des- 
pondency by making us share it with them, when 
these come and tell us that in regard to Ireland we 
have only a choice between two desperate alternatives 
before us, or that we have nothing before us except 
ruin and confusion, then simple people, who have 
divested themselves of pedantry, may answer : " You 
forget that there is one remedy which you have never 
mentioned, and apparently never thought of. It has 
not occurred to you to try breaking visibly, and by a 
striking and solemn act, — the expropriation of bad 
landlords, — with your evil and oppressive past in 
Ireland. Perhaps your other remedies may succeed 
if you add this remedy to them, even though without 
it they cannot." And surely we insignificant people, 
in our retirement, may solace our minds with the 
imagination of right-minded and equitable English- 
men, men like the Lord Chief Justice of England, 
and Mr. Samuel Morley, and others whom one could 
easily name, acting as a Commission to draw up a list 
of the thoroughly bad landlords, representatives of 
the old evil system, and then bringing their list back 
to London and saying : " Expropriate these, as the 
monks were expropriated, by Act of Parliament." 
And since nothing is so exasperating as pedantry 
when people are in serious troubles, it may console 
the poor Irish, too, when official personages insist on 
assuring them that certain insufficient remedies are 
sufficient, and are also the only remedies possible, it 
may console them to know, that there are a number 
of quiet people, over here, who feel that this sort of 
thing is pedantry and make-believe, and who dislike 
and distrust our common use of it, and think it 



298 IRISH ESSAYS. ' [l. 

dangerous. These quiet people know that it must go 
on being used for a long time yet, but they condemn 
and disown it; and they do their best to prepare 
opinion for banishing it. 

But the truth is, in regard to Ireland, the pre- 
judices of our two most influential classes, the upper 
class and the middle class, tend always to make a 
compromise together, and to be tender to one another's 
weaknesses ; and this is unfortunate for Ireland, It 
prevents the truth, on the two matters where English 
wrong-doing has been deepest, — the land and religion, 
— from being ever strongly spoken out and fairly 
acted upon, even by those who might naturally have 
been expected to go right in the matter in question. 
The English middle class, who have not the prejudices 
and passions of a landowning class, might have been 
expected to sympathise with the Irish in their ill-usage 
by the grantees of confiscation, and to interfere in 
order to relieve them from it. The English upper 
class, who have not the prejudices and passions of 
our middle class, might have been expected to sym- 
pathise with the Irish in the ill-treatment of their 
religion, and to interfere in order to relieve them 
from it. But nothing clouds men's minds and im- 
pairs their honesty like prejudice. Each class forbears 
to touch the other's prejudice too roughly, for fear of 
provoking a like rough treatment of its own. Our 
aristocratic class does not firmly protest against the 
unfair treatment of Irish Catholicism, because it is 
nervous about the land. Our middle class does not 
firmly insist on breaking with the old evil system 
of Irish landlordism, because it is nervous about 
Popery. 

And even if the middle class were to insist on 
doing right with the land, it would be of no use, it 
would not reconcile Ireland, unless they can also be 



I.] THE INCOMPATIBLES. 299 

brouglit to do right, when the occasion comes, with 
religion. It is very important to keep this in fall 
view. The land question is the question of the 
moment. Liberals are fond of saying that Mr. 
Gladstone's concessions will remove Irish discontent. 
Even the Pall Mall Gazette, the most serious and 
clear-minded of the exponents of Liberal ideas, talks 
sometimes as if a good Land Bill would settle every- 
thing. It will not ; and it is deceiving ourselves to 
hope that it will. The thing is to bring Ireland to 
acquiesce cordially in the English connection. This 
can be brought about only by doing perfect justice 
to Ireland, not in one particular matter only, but in 
all the matters where she has suffered great wrong. 
Miss O'Brien quotes an excellent saying of Fox's : 
" We ought not to presume to legislate for a nation 
in whose feelings and affections, wants and interests, 
opinions and prejudices, we have no sympathy." It 
is most true j and it is of general application. Mr. 
Bright is said to be desirous of dealing thoroughly 
with the Irish Land Question. With the wants and 
interests of the Irish people in this matter, even with 
their feelings and affections, opinions and prejudices, 
he is capable of sympathy. But how as to their 
wants and interests, feelings and affections, opinions 
and prejudices, in the matter of their religion "? 
When they ask to have their Catholicism treated as 
Anglicanism is treated in England, and Presbyterian- 
ism is treated in Scotland, is Mr. Bright capable of 
sympathy with them % If he is, would he venture 
to show it if they made their request % I think one 
may pretty well anticipate what would happen. Mr. 
Carvell Williams would begin to stir, Mr. Jesse 
Collings would trot out that spavined, vicious-eyed 
Liberal hobby, expressly bred to do duty against the 
Irish Catholics : The Liberal 'party has emphatically con- 



300 IRISH ESSAYS. [i. 

demned religious endowment ; — and I greatly fear that 
Mr. Bright would pat it approvingly. 

" Sir, it is proper to inform you, that our measures 
must he healing.^' Who but a pedant could imagine 
that our disestablishment of the Irish Church was a 
satisfaction of the equitable claims of Irish Catholicism 
upon us ? that it was healing ? By this policy, in 
1868, "the Liberal Ministry resolved to knit the 
hearts of the empire into one harmonious concord ; 
and knitted they were accordingly." Parliament and 
public of pedants ! they were nothing of the kind, 
and you know it. Ministers could disestablish the 
Irish Church, because there is among the Noncon- 
formists of England and Scotland an antipathy to 
religious establishments ; but justice to Irish Catholi- 
cism, and equal treatment with Anglicanism in England 
and with Presbyterianism in Scotland, your Govern- 
ment could not give, because of the bigotry of the 
English and Scotch of the middle class. Do you 
suppose that the Irish Catholics feel any particular 
gratitude to a Liberal Ministry for gratifying its 
Nonconformist supporters, and giving itself the air of 
achieving "a grand and genial policy of conciliation," 
without doing them real justice 1 They do not, and 
cannot ; and your measure was not healing. I think 
I was the only person who said so, in print at any 
rate, at the time. Plenty of people saw it, but the 
English are pedants, and it was thought that if we all 
agreed to call what we had done "a grand and 
genial policy of conciliation," perhaps it would pass 
for being so. But "it is not your fond desire nor 
mine that can alter the nature of things." At present 
I hear on all sides that the Irish Catholics, who to 
do them justice are quick enough, see our "grand 
and genial " act of 1868 in simply its true light, and 
are not grateful for it in the least. 



l] the incompatibles. 301 

Do I say that a Liberal Ministry could, in 1868, 
have done justice to Irish Catholicism, or that it could 
do justice to it now? "Go to the Surrey Tabernacle," 
say my Liberal friends to me ; " regard that forest 
of firm, serious, unintelligent faces uplifted towards 
Mr. Spurgeon, and then ask yourselves what would 
be the effect produced on all that force of hard and 
narrow prejudice by a proposal of Mr. Gladstone to 
pay the Catholic priests in Ireland, or to give them 
money for their houses and churches, or to establish 
schools and universities suited to Catholics, as 
England has public schools and universities suited to 
Anglicans, and Scotland such as are suited to Presby- 
terians. What would be Mr. Gladstone's chance of 
carrying such a measure i" I know quite well, of 
course, that he would have no chance at all of carrying 
it. But the English people are improvable, I hope. 
Slowly this powerful race works its way out of its 
confining ruts and its clouded vision of things, to the 
manifestation of those great qualities which it has at 
bottom, — piety, integrity, good-nature, and good- 
humour. Our serious middle class, which has so 
turned a religion full of grace and truth into a 
religion full of hardness and misapprehension, is not 
doomed to lie in its present dark obstruction for 
ever, it is improvable. And we insignificant quiet 
people, as we had our consolation from perceiving 
what might yet be done about the land, when rhe- 
toricians were startling us out of our senses, and 
despondent persons were telling us that there was 
no hope left, so we have our consolation, too, from 
perceiving what may yet be done about Catholicism. 
There is still something in reserve, still a resource 
which we have not yet tried, and which all classes 
and parties amongst us have agreed never to mention, 
but which in quiet circles, where pedantry is laid 



302 IRISH ESSAYS. [i. 

aside and things are allowed to be what they are, 
presents itself to our minds and is a great comfort to 
us. And the Irish too, when they are exasperated 
by the pedantry and unreality of the agreement, in 
England, to pass off as " a great and genial policy of 
conciliation " what is nothing of the kind, may be 
more patient if they know that there is an increasing 
number of persons, over here, who abhor this make- 
believe and try to explode it, though keeping quite 
in the background at present, and seeking to work 
on men's minds quietly rather than to bustle in 
Parliament and at public meetings. 

Before, then, we adopt the tremendous alternative 
of either governing Ireland as a Crown colony or 
casting her adrift, before we afflict ourselves with the 
despairing thought that Ireland is going inevitably 
to confusion and ruin, there is still something left 
for us. As we pleased ourselves with the imagination 
of Lord Coleridge and Mr. Samuel Morley, and 
other like men of truth and equity, going as a Com- 
mission to Ireland, and enabling us to break with 
the old evil system as to the land by expropriating 
the worst landlords, and as we were comforted by 
thinking that though this might be out of the question 
at present, yet perhaps, if everything else failed, it 
might be tried and succeed, — so we may do in regard 
to Catholicism. We may please ourselves with the 
imagination of Lord Coleridge and the other Mr. 
Morley, — Mr. John Morley, — and men of like free- 
dom with them from bigotry and prejudice, going as 
a Commission to Ireland, and putting us in the right 
way to do justice to the religion of the mass of the 
Irish people, and to make amends for our abominable 
treatment of it under the long reign of the Penal 
Code, — a treatment much worse than Louis the 
Fourteenth's treatment of French Protestantism, much 



I.] THE INCOMPATIBLES. 303 

worse, even, than the planters' treatment of theii- 
slaves, and yet maintained without scruple by our 
religious people while they were invoking the ven- 
geance of heaven on Louis the Fourteenth, and were 
turning up their eyes in anguish at the ill-usage of 
the distant negro. And here, too, though to carry a 
measure really healing may be out of the question at 
present, yet perhaps, if everything else fails, such a 
measure may at last be tried and succeed. 

But it is not yet enough, even, that our measures 
should be healing. " The temper, too, of the Irish 
must be managed, and their good affections cultivated." 
If we want to bring the Irish to acquiesce cordially 
in the English connection, it is not enough even to 
do justice and to make well-being general ; we and 
our civilisation must also be attractive to them. And 
this opens a great question, on which I must proceed 
to say something. 



II. 

Since the foregoing remarks were written, the Irish 
Land Bill has been brought into Parliament. It is 
much what was anticipated. And it is easy enough, 
no doubt, to pick holes in the claim of such a measure 
to be called healing. 

For let us recapitulate how the matter stands. 
It stands thus. The Irish chafe against the connection 
with this country. They are exasperated with us ; 
they are, we are told, like wolves ready to fly at the 
throat of England. And their quarrel with us, so 
far as it proceeds from causes which can be dealt 
with by a Land Act, — their quarrel with us is for 
maintaining the actual land-system and landlords of 
Ireland by the irresistible might of Great Britain. 



304 IRISH ESSAYS. [r. 

Now, the grievance which they allege against the 
land-system and landlords is twofold ; it is both 
moral and material. The moral grievance is, that 
the system and the men represent a hateful history 
of conquest, confiscation, ill-usage, misgovernment, 
and tyranny. The material grievance is, that it 
never having been usual with the landowner in 
Ireland, as it is in England, to set down his tenant 
in what may be called a completely furnished farm, 
the Irish tenant had himself to do what was requisite ; 
but when he had done it, it was the landlord's pro- 
perty, and the tenant lost the benefit of it by losing 
his farm. 

As to the material grievance there is no dispute. 
As to the moral grievance, it is urged on our side 
that "the confiscations, the public auctions, the 
private grants, the plantations, the transplantations, 
which animated," says Burke, " so many adventurers 
to Irish expeditions," are things of the past, and of 
a distant past ; that they are things which have 
happened in all countries, and have been forgiven 
and forgotten with the course of time. True ; but 
in Ireland they have not been forgiven and forgotten. 
And a fair man will find himself brought to the 
conservative Burke's conclusion, that this is mainly 
due to the proceedings of the English in-comers, 
with whom their " melancholy and invidious title " 
of grantees of - confiscation was for so long time a 
favourite, and who so long looked upon the native 
Irish as a race of bigoted savages, to be treated with 
contempt and tyranny at their pleasure. Instead of 
putting these disagreeable facts out of sight, as we 
are so apt to do when we think and speak of the 
state of Ireland, we ought resolutely to keep them 
before us. "Even the harsh laws against popery 
were the product," says Burke, "of contempt and 



I.] THE INCOMPATIBLES. 305 

tyranny, rather than of religious zeal. From what I 
have observed, it is pride, arrogance, and a spirit of 
domination, and not a bigoted spirit of religion, that 
has caused and kept up these oppressive statutes." 
The memory of the original "terrible confiscatory 
and exterminatory periods " was thus kept aKve, and 
the country never settled down. 

However, it is urged, again, that the possessors of 
the soil are now quite changed in spirit towards the 
native Irish, and changed in their way of acting 
towards them. It is urged that some good landlords 
there always were, and that now, as a class, they are 
good, while there are many of them who are excellent. 
But the memory of an odious and cruel past is not so 
easily blotted out. And there are still in Ireland 
landlords, both old and new, both large and small, 
who are very bad, and who by their hardness and 
oppressiveness, or by their contempt and neglect, 
keep awake the sense of ancient, intolerable wrong. 
So stands the case with the moral grievance ; it 
exists, it has cause for existing, and it calls for 
remedy. 

The best remedy, one would have thought, would 
be a direct one. The grievance is moral, and is best 
to be met and wiped out by a direct moral satisfac- 
tion. Every one who considers the thing fairly will 
see that the Irish have a moral grievance, that it is 
the chief source of their restlessness and resentment, 
that by indirect satisfactions it is not easy to touch 
it, but that by such an act as the expropriation of 
bad landlords it would have been met directly. Such 
an act would be a moral expiation and satisfaction 
for a moral wrong ; it would be a visible breaking, 
on the part of this country and its Government, with 
the odious and oppressive system long upheld by 
their power. The vices and follies of the bad land- 
VOL. IV. X 



306 IRISH ESSAYS. [i. 

lords in Ireland have struck at the root of order. 
Things have gone on without real and searching cure 
there, until the country is in a revolutionary state. 
Expropriation is, say objectors, a revolutionary 
measure. But when a country is in a revolutionary 
state you must sometimes have the courage to apply 
revolutionary measures. The revolution is there 
already; you must have the courage to apply the 
measures which really cope with it. Coercion, im- 
prisonment of men without trial, is a revolutionary 
measure. But it may be very right to apply coercion 
to a country in Ireland's present state ; perhaps even 
to apply a coercion far more stringent and effectual 
than that which we apply now. It would be a 
revolutionary measure to have the bad landlords of 
Ireland scheduled in three classes by a Commission, 
and, taking twenty-five years' purchase as the ordinary 
selling-price of an Irish estate, to expropriate the 
least bad of the three classes of scheduled landlords 
at twenty years' purchase, the next class at fifteen 
years' purchase, the worst at ten years' purchase. 
But it would be an act justified by the revolutionary 
state into which the misdoing of landlords of this 
sort, preventing prescription and a secure settlement 
of things from arising, has brought Ireland. It 
would fall upon those who represent the ill-doers of 
the past, and who are actually ill-doers themselves. 
And finally, it would be a moral reparation and 
satisfaction, made for a great and passionately felt 
moral wrong, and would, as such, undoubtedly have 
its full effect upon the heart and imagination of the 
Irish people. To have commuted the partial owner- 
ship, which the Irish tenant has in equity acquired 
by his improvements of the land cultivated by him, 
for absolute o^vnership of a certain portion of the 
land, as Stein commuted the peasant's partial oWner- 



I.] THE IXCOMPATIBLES. 307 

ship in Prussia ; to have given facilities, as is now 
proposed, for emigration, and for the purchase of 
land and its distribution amongst a greater number 
of proprietors than at present ; — this, joined to the 
expropriation of bad landlords, is what might naturally 
occur to one as the simple and direct way of remedy- 
ing Irish agrarian discontent, and as likely to have 
been effective and sufficient for the purpose. 

The Land Bill of the Government has provisions 
for furthering emigration, and provisions to facilitate 
the purchase of land. But the moral grievance of 
the Irish occupier it does not deal with at all ; it 
gives no satisfaction to it and attempts to give none. 
It directs itself exclusively to his material grievance. 
It makes no distinction between good and bad land- 
lords, — it treats them all as alike. But to the partial 
ownership which the occupier has in equity acquired 
in the land by his improvements, it gives the force 
of law, establishes a tribunal for regulating and en- 
forcing it, and does its best to make this sort of 
partial ownership perpetual. The desirable thing, if 
it could but be done, is, on the contrary, as every 
one who weighs the matter calmly must surely admit, 
to sweep away this partial ownership, — to sweep away 
tenant-right altogether. It is said that tenant-right 
is an Irish invention, a remedy by which the Irish 
people themselves have in some degree met the wants 
of their own case, and that it is dear to them on that 
account. In legislating for them we ought studiously 
to adopt, we are told, their inventions, and not to 
impose upon them ours. Such reasoners forget that 
tenant-right was a mere palliative, used in a state 
of things where thorough relief was out of the 
question. Tenant-right was better than nothing, 
but ownership is better still. The absolute owner- 
ship of a part, by a process of commutation Hke 



308 lEISH ESSAYS. [i. 

Stein's in Prussia, engages a man's affections far 
more than any tenant-right, or divided and dis- 
putable ownership in a whole. Such absolute owner- 
ship was out of the question when the Irish occupier 
invented tenant-right ; but it would in itself please 
him better than tenant-right, and commutation might 
have now given it to him. 

The Land Bill, on the other hand, adopts, legalises, 
formulates tenant-right, a description of ownership 
unfamiliar to countries of our sort of civilisation, 
and very inconvenient. It establishes it throughout 
Ireland, and, by a scheme which is a miracle of 
intricacy and complication, it invites the most con- 
tentious and litigious people in the world to try 
conclusions with their landlords as to the ownership 
divided between them. 

I cannot think such a measure naturally healing. 
A divided ownership of this kind will probably, 
however, no more be able to establish itself per- 
manently in Ireland than it has established itself in 
France or Prussia. One has the comfort of thinking 
that the many and new proprietors who will, it is to 
be hoped, be called into being by the Purchase Clauses, 
will indubitably find the plan of divided ownership 
intolerable, and will sooner or later get rid of it. 

I had recourse to Burke in the early part of these 
remarks, and I wish to keep him with me, as far as 
possible, to the end. Burke writes to Windham : 
"Our politics want directness and simplicity. A 
spirit of chicane predominates in all that is done ; 
we proceed more like lawyers than statesmen. All 
our misfortunes have arisen from this intricacy and 
ambiguity of our politics." It is wonderful how 
great men agree. For really Burke is here telling 
us, in another way, only what we found Goethe 
telling when we began to discuss these Irish matters : 



I.] THE INCOMPATIBLES. 309 

the English are pedants. The pedant, the man of 
routine, loves the movement and bustle of politi(3s, 
but by no means wants to have to rummage and 
plough up his mind ; he shrinks from simplicity, 
therefore, he abhors it ; for simplicity cannot be had 
without thinking, without considerable searchings of 
spirit. He abhors simplicity, and therefore of course 
his governments do not often give it to him. He 
has his formula, his catchword, which saves him from 
thinking, and which he is always ready to apply; 
and anything simple is, from its very simplicity, 
more likely to give him an opening to apply his 
formula. If you propose to him the expropriation 
of bad landlords, he has his formula ready, that the 
Englishman has a respect for the eighth commandment. 
If you propose to him to do justice to the Irish 
Catholics, he has his formula, at one time, that the 
sovereign must not violate his coronation oath, at another, 
that the Protestants of Great Britain are implacably 
hostile to the endowment of Catholicism in any shape or 
form, or else, that the Liberal party has emphatically 
condemned religious endowment. A complicated intri- 
cate measure is the very thing for governments to 
offer him, because, while it gives him the gratifying 
sense of taking in hand something considerable, it 
does not bring him face to face with a principle, 
does not provoke him to the exhibition of one of 
those formulas which, in presence of a principle, he 
has always at hand in order to save himself the 
trouble of thinking. And having this personage to 
deal with, governments are not much to be blamed, 
perhaps, for approaching their object in an indirect 
manner, for eschewing simplicity and for choosing 
complication. 

The Irish Land Bill, then, does not meet the 
moral grievance of the Irish occupier at all, and it 



310 lEISH ESSAYS. [i. 

meets his material grievance in a roundabout, com- 
plicated manner, and by means that are somewhat 
hard upon good landlords. But it does meet it after a 
fashion. And, in meeting it, it does not challenge 
the exhibition of any of the pedantic Englishman's 
stock formulas ; while it effects, at the same time, 
some very useful things by the way. 

And, certainly, governments which seek to com- 
pass their ends in this kind of manner do not incur 
that severe condemnation which Burke passes upon 
ministers who make it their business " still further to 
contract the narrowness of men's ideas, to confirm 
inveterate prejudices, to inflame vulgar passions, and 
to abet all sorts of popular absurdities." No, not by 
any means do they deserve this formidable blame. 
But when Burke writes to the Duke of Eichmond of 
that day, that, without censuring his political friends, 
he must say that he perceives in them no regular or 
steady endeavour of any kind to bestow the same 
pains which they bestow on carrying a measure, or 
winning an election, or keeping up family interest in 
a county, " on that which is the end and object of all 
elections, namely, the disposing our peojyle to a better 
sense of their condition," — when Burke says this, then 
he says what does touch, it seems to me, both the 
present government, and almost all governments 
which come and go in this country ; — touches them 
very nearly. Governments acquiesce too easily in 
the mass of us English people being, as Goethe says, 
pedants ; they are too apprehensive of coming into 
conflict with our pedantry; they show too much 
respect to its formulas and catchwords. They make 
no regular or sustained endeavours of any kind to 
dispose us poor creatures to a better sense of our 
condition. If they acquiesce so subm-issively in our 
being pedants in politics, pedants we shall always be. 



I.] THE INCOMPATIBLES. 311 

We want guidance from those who are placed in a 
condition to see. "God and nature never made 
them," says Burke of all the pedantic rank and file 
of us in politics, " to think or to act without guidance 
or direction." But we hardly ever get it from our 
government. 

And I suppose it was despair at this sort of thing, 
in his own time and commonwealth, which made 
Socrates say, when he was reproached for standing 
aloof from politics, that in his own opinion, by taking 
the line he did, he was the only true politician of 
men then living. Socrates saw that the thing most 
needful was " to dispose the jpeojple to a better sense of 
their condition^'' and that the actual politicians never 
did it. And serious people at the present day may 
well be inclined, though they have no Socrates to 
help them, at any rate to stand aside, as he did, from 
the movement of our prominent politicians and 
journalists, and of the rank and file who appear to 
follow, but who really do oftenest direct them ; — to 
stand aside, and to try whether they cannot bring 
themselves, at all events, to a better sense of their 
own condition and of the condition of the people and 
things around them. 

The problem is, to get Ireland to acquiesce in the 
English connection as cordially as Scotland, Wales, or 
Cornwall acquiesce in it. We quiet people pretend 
to no lights which are not at the disposal of all the 
world. Possibly, if we were mixed up in the game 
of politics, we should play it much as other people 
do, according to the laws of that routine. Mean- 
while, not playing it, and being in the safe and easy 
position of lookers-on and critics, we ought assuredly 
to be very careful to treat the practical endeavours 
and plans of other people without pedantry and 
without prejudice, only remembering that our one 



312 IRISH ESSAYS. [i. 

business is to see things as they really are. Ireland, 
then, is to be brought, if possible, to acquiesce cor- 
dially in the English connection ; and to this end our 
measures must be healing. Now, the Land Bill of 
the Government does not seem to deserve thoroughly 
the name of a healing measure. We have given our 
reasons for thinking so. But the question is, whether 
that Bill proposes so defective a settlement as to 
make, of itself, Ireland's cordial acquiescence in the 
English connection impossible, and to compel us to 
resign ourselves a prey to the alarmists. One cannot 
without unfairness and exaggeration say this of it. 
It is offered with the best intentions, it deals with 
the material grievance of the Irish occupier if not 
with his moral grievance, and it proposes to do certain 
unquestionably good and useful things, besides redress- 
ing this grievance. It will not of itself make the 
Irish acquiesce cordially in the English connection. 
But then neither would a thoroughly good Land Bill 
suffice to do this. The partisans of the Government 
are fond of saying, indeed : " A good Land Bill will 
take the political bread out of Mr, Parnell's mouth." 
Mr. Parnell maintains, that he and his friends "have 
the forces of nature, the forces of nationality, and the 
forces of patriotism," working for the separation of 
Ireland from England : and so they have, up to the 
present time. Now, a good Land Bill will not suffice 
to stay and annul the working of these forces, though 
politicians who are busy over a Land Bill will always 
be prone to talk as if it would suffice to do whatever 
may be required. But it will not. Much more than 
a good Land Bill is necessary in order to annul the 
forces which are working for separation. The best 
Land Bill will not reduce to impotence the partisans 
of separation, unless other things are accomplished 
too. On the other hand, the present Land Bill is 



I.] THE INCOMPATIBLES. 313 

not so defective as that it need prevent cordial union, 
if these other things are accomplished. 

One of them has been mentioned already in the 
former part of these remarks. I mean the equitable 
treatment of Catholicism. To many of the Liberal 
party it is a great deal easier to offer to Ireland a fair 
Land Bill, than to offer to her a fair treatment of Catho- 
licism. You may offer as fair a Land Bill as you 
please ; but nevertheless if, presently, when the Irish 
ask to have public schools and universities suited to 
Catholics, as England has public schools and univer- 
sities suited to Anglicans, and Scotland such as are 
suited to Presbyterians, you fall back in embarrass- 
ment upon your formula of pedants. The Liberal party 
has emjphatically condemned religious endowment, then 
you give to the advocates of separation a new lease 
of power and influence. You enable them still to 
keep saying with truth, that they have " the forces 
of nature, the forces of nationality, and the forces of 
patriotism," on their side. " Our measures must he 
healing" and it is not only as to Irish land that heal- 
ing measures are necessary ; they are necessary as to 
the Irish people's religion also. 

If this were in any good measure accomplished, 
if, even, we offered the Land Bill which Mr. Glad- 
stone brings forward now, and if we offered a treat- 
ment of Catholicism as well intentioned and as 
fair in its way, then indeed things would have a look 
of cheerful promise, and politicians would prob- 
ably think that the grand consummation had been 
reached, and that the millennium was going to begin. 
But a quiet bystander might still be cool-headed 
enough to suspect, that for winning and attaching a 
people so alienated from us as the Irish, something 
more, even, is required than fair measures in redress 
of actual misusage and wrong. " Their temper, 



314 IRISH ESSAYS. [i. 

too, must be managed, and their good affections 
cultivated." 

Many of us talk as if the mere calculation of their 
interest, of the advantage to their commerce, industry, 
and security from the English connection, must induce 
the Irish to blend readily with us, if they were but 
treated justly. But with a people such as the Irish, 
and when once such a feeling of repulsion has been 
excited in them as we have managed to excite, the 
mere redress of injustice and the calculation of their 
interest is not alone sufficient to win them. They 
must find in us something that in general suits them 
and attracts them ; they must feel an attractive force, 
drawing and binding them to us, in what is called 
our civilisation. This is what blends Scotland and 
Wales with us ; not alone their interest, but that our 
civilisation in general suits them and they like it. This 
is what so strongly attached to France the Germanic 
Alsace, and keeps it attached in spirit to France still : 
the wonderfully attractive power of French civilisation. 

Some say, that what we have in Ireland is a lower 
civilisation, hating the advent of a higher civilisation 
from England, and rebelling against it. And it is 
quite true, that certain obvious merits of the English, 
and by which they have much prospered, — such as 
their exactness and neatness, for instance (to say no 
more than what everybody must admit), — are dis- 
agreeable to Irish laxity and slovenliness, and are 
resisted by them. Still, a high civilisation is natur- 
ally attractive. The turn and habits of the French 
have much that is irksome and provoking to Germans, 
yet French civilisation attracted Alsace povr^erfully. 
It behoves us to make quite sure, before we talk of 
Ireland's lower civilisation resisting the higher civilis- 
ation of England, that our civilisation is really high, 
— high enough to exercise attraction. 



I.] THE INCOMPATIBLES. 315 

Business is civilisation, think many of us ; it creates 
and implies it. The general diffusion of material 
well-being is civilisation, thought Mr. Cobden, as that 
eminent man's biographer has just informed us ; it 
creates and implies it. Not always. And for fear 
we should forget what business and what material 
well-being have to create, before they do really imply 
civilisation, let us, at the risk of being thought tire- 
some, repeat here what we have said often of old. 
Business and material well-being are signs of expan- 
sion and parts of it ; but civilisation, that great and 
complex force, includes much more than even that 
power of expansion of which they are parts. It 
includes also the power of conduct, the power of 
intellect and knowledge, the power of beauty, the 
power of social life and manners. To the building 
up of human life all these powers belong. If business 
is civilisation, then business must manage to evolve all 
these powers ; if a widely-spread material well-being 
is civilisation, then that well-being must manage to 
evolve all of them. It is written : Man doth not live 
by bread alone. 

Now, one of the above-mentioned factors of civilis- 
ation is, without doubt, singularly absent from ours, 
— the power of social life and manners. "The 
English are just, but not amiable," was a sentence 
which, as we know, even those who had benefited 
by our rule felt themselves moved to pass on us. 
We underrate the strength of this particular element 
of civilisation, underrate its attractive influence, its 
power. Mansueti possidebunt terram ; — the gentle 
shall possess the earth. We are apt to account 
amiability weak and hardness strong. But, even if 
it were so, " there are forces," as George Sand says 
truly and beautifully, " there are forces of weakness, 
of docility, of attractiveness, or of suavity, which are 



316 lEISH ESSAYS. [i. 

quite as real as the forces of vigour, of encroachment, 
of violence, or of brutality." And to those softer but 
not less real forces the Irish people are peculiarly 
susceptible. They are full of sentiment. They have 
by nature excellent manners themselves, and they 
feel the charm of manners instinctively. 

"Courtesy," says Yauvenargues, "is the bond of 
all society, and there is no society which can last 
without it." But if courtesy is required to cement 
society, no wonder the Irish are estranged from us. 
For we must remember who it is of us that they 
mostly see, who and what it is that in the main re- 
present our civilisation to them. The power of social 
life and manners, so far as we have it, is in Great 
Britain displayed above all in our aristocratic class. 
Mr. Carlyle's tribute to the manners and merits of 
this class will be fresh in our minds. "With due 
limitation of the grossly worthless, I should vote at 
present that, of classes known to me in England, the 
aristocracy (with its perfection of human politeness, 
its continual grace of bearing and of acting, steadfast 
" honour," light address, and cheery stoicism), if you 
see well into it, is actually yet the best of English 
classes." But our aristocracy, who have, on Mr. 
Carlyle's showing, this power of manners so attractive 
to the Irish nature, and who in England fill so large 
a place, and do really produce so much effect upon 
people's minds and imaginations, the Irish see almost 
nothing of. Their members who are connected with 
Ireland are generally absentees. Mr. Lecky is dis- 
posed to regret very much this want in Ireland of a 
resident aristocracy, and says that the Irish people 
are by nature profoundly aristocratical. At any rate, 
the Irish people are capable of feeling strongly the 
attraction of the power of manners in an aristocracy ; 
and, with an aristocracy filling the place there which 



I.] THE INCOMPATIBLES. 317 

it fills in Great Britain, Ireland would no doubt have 
been something very different from what it is now. 

While I admit, however, the merits of our 
aristocracy, while I admit the effect it produces in 
England and the important place it fills, while I 
admit that if a good body of it were resident in 
Ireland we should probably have Ireland in another 
and a more settled state, yet I do not think that a 
real solution would have been thus reached there 
any more than it has been reached, I think, here. I 
mean, if Ireland had had the same social system as 
we have, she would have been different from her 
present self indeed, but sooner or later she would 
have found herself confronting the same difficulty 
which we in England are beginning to feel now ; the 
difficulty, namely, that the social system in question 
ends by landing modern communities in the possessor- 
ship of an upper class materialised, a middle class 
vulgarised, a lower class brutalised. But I am not 
going to discuss these matters now. What I want 
now to point out is, that the Irish do not much come 
across our aristocracy, exhibiting that factor of 
civilisation, the power of manners, which has un- 
doubtedly a strong attraction for them. What they 
do come across, and what gives them the idea they 
have of our civilisation and of its promise, is our 
middle class. 

I have said so much about this class at divers 
times, and what I have said about it has made me so 
many enemies, that I prefer to take the words of 
anybody rather than myself for showing the impres- 
sion which this class is likely to make, and which it 
does make, upon the Irish, and the sort of idea which 
the Irish and others may be apt to form of the 
attractions of its civilisation for themselves, or for 
mankind in general, or for any one except us natives 



318 IRISH ESSAYS. [r. 

of Great Britain. There is a book familiar to us all, 
and the more familiar now, probably, to manj'- of us 
because Mr. Gladstone solaced himself with it after 
his illness, and so set all good Liberals (of whom I 
wish to be considered one) upon reading it over 
again. I mean David Cojpperfield. Much as I have 
published, I do not think it has ever yet happened 
to me to comment in print upon any production of 
Charles Dickens. What a pleasure to have the 
opportunity of praising a work so sound, a work so 
rich in merit, as David Cojpperfield ! "Man lese nicht 
die mit-strebende, mit-wirkende ! " says Goethe : "do 
not read your fellow-strivers, your fellow-workers ! " 
Of the contemporary rubbish which is shot so plenti- 
fully all around us, we can, indeed, hardly read too 
little. But to contemporary work so good as David 
Co;pperjield^ we are in danger of perhaps not paying 
respect enough, of reading it (for who could help 
reading \if) too hastily, and then putting it aside for 
something else and forgetting it. What treasures of 
gaiety, invention, life, are in that book ! what alertness 
and resource ! what a soul of good nature and kind- 
ness governing the whole ! Such is the admirable 
work which I am now going to call in evidence. 

Intimately, indeed, did Dickens know the middle 
class ; he was bone of its bone and flesh of its flesh. 
Intimately he knew its bringing up. With the 
hand of a master he has drawn for us a type of the 
teachers and trainers of its youth, a type of its places 
of education. Mr. Creakle and Salem House are 
immortal. The type itself, it is to be hoped, will 
perish ; but the drawing of it which Dickens has 
given cannot die. Mr. Creakle, the stout gentleman 
with a bunch of watch-chain and seals, in an arm 
chair, with the fiery face and the thick veins in his 
forehead ; Mr. Creakle sitting at his breakfast with 



I.] THE INCOMPATIBLES. 319 

the cane, and a newspaper, and the buttered toast 
before him, will sit on, like Theseus, for ever. For 
ever will last the recollection of Salem House, and of 
'' the daily strife and struggle " there ; the recollection 

' ' of the frosty mornings when we were rung out of bed, and 
the cold, cold smell of the dark nights when we were rung into 
bed again ; of the evening schoolroom dimly lighted and in- 
differently warmed, and the morning schoolroom which was 
nothing but a great shivering machine ; of the alternation of 
boiled beef with roast beef, and boiled mutton with roast mutton ; 
of clods of bread and butter, dog's-eared lesson-books, cracked 
slates, tear-blotted copy-books, canings, rulerings, hair -cuttings, 
rainy Sundays, suet-puddings, and a dirty atmosphere of ink 
surrounding all." 

A man of much knowledge and much intelligence, 
Mr. Baring Gould, published not long ago a book 
about Germany, in which he adduced testimony 
which, in a curious manner, proves how true and to 
the life this picture of Salem House and of Mr. 
Creakle is. The public schools of Germany come to 
be spoken of in that book, and the training which 
the whole middle class of Germans gets in them ; 
and Mr. Gould mentions what is reported by young 
Germans trained in their own German schools, who 
have afterwards served as teachers of foreign lan- 
guages and ushers in the ordinary private schools for 
the middle class in England. With one voice they 
tell us of establishments like Salem House and prin- 
cipals like Mr. Creakle. They are astonished, dis- 
gusted. They cannot understand how such things 
can be, and how a great and well-to-do class can be 
content with such an ignoble bringing up. But so 
things are, and they report their experience of them, 
and their experience brings before us, over and over 
again, Mr. Creakle and Salem House. 

A critic in the Wmid newspaper says, what is very 



320 IRISH ESSAYS. [i. 

true, that in this country the middle class has no 
naturally defined limits, that it is difficult to say who 
properly belong to it and who do not, and that the 
term, middle class, is taken in different senses by 
different people. This is most true. And therefore, 
for my part, to prevent ambiguity and confusion, I 
always have adopted an educational test, and by the 
middle class I understand those who are brought up 
at establishments which are more or less like Salem 
House, and by educators who are more or less like 
Mr. Creakle. And the great mass of the middle 
part, of our community, the part which comes 
between those who labour with their hands, on the 
one side, and people of fortune, on the other, is 
brought up at establishments of the kind, although 
there is a certain portion broken off at the top which 
is educated at better. But the great mass are both 
badly taught, and are also brought up on a lower 
plane than is right, brought up ignobly. And this 
deteriorates their standard of life, their civilisation. 

True, they have at the same time great merits, of 
which they are fully conscious themselves, and of 
which all who are in any way akin to them, and 
disposed to judge them fairly and kindly, cannot but 
be conscious also. True, too, there are exceptions to 
the common rule among the establishments and 
educators that bring them up ; there are good 
schools and good schoolmasters scattered among them. 
True, moreover, amongst the thousands who undergo 
Salem House and Mr. Creakle there are some born 
lovers of the humane life, who emerge from the 
training with natures unscathed, or who at any rate 
recover from it. But, on the mass, the training 
produces with fatal sureness the effect of lowering 
their standard of life and impairing their civilisation. 
It helps to produce in them, and it perpetuates, a 



I.] THE INCOMPATIBLES. 321 

defective tj^e of religion, a narrow range of intellect 
and knowledge, a stunted sense of beauty, a low 
standard of manners. 

And this is what those who are not akin to them, 
who are not at all disposed to be friendly observers of 
them, this is what such people see in them ; — this, 
and nothing more. This is what the Celtic and Catholic 
Irish see in them. The Scotch, the Scotch of the 
Lowlands, of by far the most populous and powerful 
part of Scotland, are men of just the same stock as 
ourselves, they breed the same sort of middle 
class as we do, and naturally do not see their own 
faults. Wales is Celtic, but the Welsh have adopted 
with ardour our middle -class religion, and this at 
once puts them in sympathy with our middle-class 
civilisation. With the Irish it is different. English 
civilisation means to the Irish the civilisation of our 
middle class; and few indeed are the attractions 
which to the Irish, with their quickness, sentiment, 
fine manners, and indisposition to be pleased with 
things English, that civilisation seems, or can seem, 
to have. They do not see the exceptions in our 
middle class; they do not see the good which is 
present even in the mis-trained mass of it. All its 
members seem of one type of civiKsation to an Irish 
eye, and that type a repulsive one. They are all 
tarred with one brush, and that brush is Creakle's. 

We may even go further still in our use of that 
charming and instructive book, the History of David 
Copperfield. We may lay our finger there on the very 
types in adult life which are the natural product of 
Salem House and of Mr. Creakle ; the very types of 
our middle class, nay of Englishmen and the English 
nature in general, as to the Irish imagination they 
appear. We have only to recall, on the one hand, 
Mr. Murdstone. Mr. Murdstone may be called the 

VOL. IV. Y 



322 lEISH ESSAYS. [i. 

natural product of a course of Salem House and of 
Mr. Creakle, acting upon hard, stern, and narrow 
natures. Let us recall, then, Mr. Murdstone ; Mr. 
Murdstone with his firmness and severity, with 
his austere religion and his tremendous visage in 
church j with his view of the world as " a place for 
action, and not for moping and droning in;" his 
view of young Copperfield's disposition as " requiring 
a great deal of correcting, and to which no greater 
service can be done than to force it to conform to the 
ways of the working world, and to bend it and break 
it." We may recall, too. Miss Murdstone, his sister, 
with the same religion, the same tremendous visage 
in church, the same firmness ; Miss Murdstone with 
her "hard steel purse," and her "uncompromising 
hard black boxes with her initials on the lids in hard 
black nails ; " severe and formidable like her brother, 
*'whom she greatly resembled in face and voice." 
These two people, with their hardness, their narrow- 
ness, their want of consideration for other people's 
feelings, their inability to enter into them, are just 
the type of the Englishman and his civilisation as 
he presents himself to the Irish mind by his serious 
side. His energy, firmness, industry, religion, exhibit 
themselves with these unpleasant features ; his bad 
qualities exhibit themselves without mitigation or 
relief 

Now, a disposition to hardness is perhaps the 
special fault and danger of our English race in 
general, going along with our merits of energy and 
honesty. It is apt even to appear in all kinds and 
classes of us, when the - circumstances are such as to 
call it forth. One can understand Cromwell himself, 
whom we earnest English Liberals reverentially name 
" the great Puritan leader," standing before the Irish 
imagination as a glorified Murdstone ; and the late 



I.] THE mCOMPATIBLES. 323 

Lord Leitrim, again, as an aristocratical Murdstone. 
Mr. Bence Jones, again, improver and benefactor as 
he undoubtedly is, yet takes a tone with the Irish 
which may not unnaturally, perhaps, affect them 
much as Murdstone's tone affected little Copperfield. 
But the genuine, unmitigated Murdstone is the 
common middle -class Englishman, who has come 
forth from Salem House and Mr. Creakle. He is 
seen in full force, of course, in the Protestant north ; 
but throughout Ireland he is a prominent figure of 
the English garrison. Him the Irish see, see him 
only too much and too often. And he represents to 
them the promise of English civilisation on its serious 
side j what this civilisation accomplishes for that 
great middle 'part of the community towards which 
the masses below are to look up and to ascend, what 
it invites those who blend themselves with us to 
become and to be. 

The thing has no power of attraction. The Irish 
quick-wittedness, sentiment, keen feeling for social life 
and manners, demand something which this hard and 
imperfect civilisation cannot give them. Its social 
form seems to them unpleasant, its energy and 
industry to lead to no happiness, its religion to be 
false and repulsive. A friend of mine who lately 
had to pursue his avocations in Lancashire, in the 
parts about St. Helens, and who has lately been 
transferred to the west of Ireland, writes to me that 
he finds with astonishment, how "even in the 
farthest ultima Thule of the west, amongst literally 
the most abjectly poverty-stricken cottiers, life 
appears to be more enjoyed than by a Lancashire 
factory-hand and family who are in the receipt of 
five pounds a week, father, mother, and children 
together, from the mill." He writes that he finds 
" all the country people here so full of courtesy and 



324 IRISH ESSAYS. [i. 

graciousness \" That is just why our civilisation has 
no attractions for them. So far as it is possessed by 
any great body in our own community, and capable 
of being imparted to any great body in another 
community, our civilisation, has no courtesy and 
graciousness, it has no enjoyment of life, it has the 
curse of hardness upon it. 

The penalty nature makes us pay for hardness is 
dulness. If we are hard, our life becomes dull and 
dismal. Our hardness grows at last weary of itself. 
In Ireland, where we have been so hard, this has 
been strikingly exemplified. Again and again, upon 
the English conqueror in his hardness and harshness, 
the ways and nature of the down -trodden, hated, 
despised Irish, came to exercise a strange, an 
irresistible magnetism. "Is it possible," asks 
Eudoxus, in Spenser's View of the State of Ireland, 
"is it possible that an Englishman, brought up in 
such sweet civility as England aff'ords, should find 
such liking in that barbarous rudeness that he should 
forget his own nature and forego his own nation*?" 
And Spenser, speaking under the name of Irenseus, 
answers that unhappily it did, indeed, often happen 
so. The Protestant Archbishop Boulter tells us, in 
like manner, that under the iron sway of the penal 
laws against Popery, and in the time of their 
severest exercise, the conversions from Protestantism 
to Popery were nevertheless a good deal more 
numerous than the conversions from Popery to 
Protestantism. Such, I say, is nature's penalty upon 
hardness. Hardness grows irksome to its very own 
self, it ends by wearying those who have it. If our 
hardness is capable of wear3dng ourselves, can we 
wonder that a civilisation stamped with it has no 
attractions for the Irish ; that Murdstone, the product 
of Salem House and of Mr. Creakle, is a type of 



I.] THE INCOMPATIBLES. 325 

humanity which repels them, and that they do not 
at all wish to be like him 1 

But in Murdstone we see English middle -class 
civilisation by its severe and serious side only. That 
civilisation has undoubtedly also its gayer and lighter 
side. And this gayer and lighter side, as well as the 
other, we shall find, wonderful to relate, in that 
all-containing treasure-house of ours, the History of 
David Copperfield. Mr. Quinion, with his gaiety, his 
chaff, his rough coat, his incessant smoking, his 
brandy and water, is the jovial, genial man of our 
middle -class civilisation, prepared by Salem House 
and Mr. Creakle, as Mr. Murdstone is its severe man. 
Quinion, we are told in our Histm-y, was the manager 
of Murdstone's business, and he is truly his pendant. 
He is the answer of our middle-class civilisation to 
the demand in man for beauty and enjoyment, as 
Murdstone is its answer to the demand for temper 
and manners. But to a quick, sentimental race, 
Quinion can be hardly more attractive than Murd- 
stone. Quinion produces our towns considered as 
seats of pleasure, as Murdstone produces them con- 
sidered as seats of business and religion. As it is 
Murdstone, the serious man, whose view of life and 
demands on life have made our Hell-holes, as Cobbett 
calls our manufacturing towns, have made the 
dissidence of dissent and the Protestantism of the 
Protestant religion, and the refusal to let Irish 
Catholics have schools and universities suited to 
them because their religion is a lie and heathenish 
superstition, so it is Quinion, the jovial man, whose 
view of life and demands on it have made our 
popular songs, comedy, art, pleasure, — made the City 
Companies and their feasts, made the London streets, 
made the Griffin. Nay, Quinion has been busy in 
Dublin, too, for have we not conquered Ireland? 



326 lEISH ESSAYS. [i. 

The streets and buildings of Dublin are full of traces 
of him j his sense of beauty governed the erection of 
Dublin Castle itself. As the civilisation of the 
French middle class is the maker of the streets and 
buildings of modern Paris, so the civilisation of the 
English middle class is the maker of the streets and 
buildings of modern London and Dublin. 

Once more. Logic and lucidity in the organising 
and administering of public business are attractive to 
many ; they are satisfactions to that instinct of intelli- 
gence in man which is one of the great powers in his 
civilisation. The immense, homogeneous, and (com- 
paratively with ours) clear-thinking French middle 
class prides itself on logic and lucidity in its public 
business. In our public business logic and lucidity are 
conspicuous by their absence. Our public business is 
governed by the wants of our middle class, and is in the 
hands of public men who anxiously watch those wants. 
Now, our middle class cares for liberty ; it does not 
care for logic and lucidity. Murdstone and Quinion 
do not care for logic and lucidity. Salem House 
and Mr. Creakle have not prepared them for 
it. Accordingly, we see the proceedings of our chief 
seat of public business, the House of Commons, 
governed by rules of which one may, I hope, at least 
say, without risk of being committed for contempt, 
that logic and lucidity have nothing to do with them. 
Mr. Chamberlain, again, was telling us only the other 
day, that "England, the greatest commercial nation 
in the world, has in its bankruptcy law the worst 
commercial legislation of any civilised country." To 
be sure, Mr. Chamberlain has also said, that "if in 
England we fall behind other nations in the intelligent 
appreciation of art, we minister to a hundred wants 
of which the other nations have no suspicion." As 
we are a commercial people, one would have thought 



I.] THE INCOMPATIBLES. 327 

that logic and lucidity in commercial legislation was 
one of these wants to which we minister ; however, 
it seems that we do not. But, outside our own 
immediate circle, logic and lucidity are felt by many 
people to be attractive ; they inspire respect, their 
absence provokes ridicule. It is a plea for Home 
Eule if we inflict the privation of them, in public 
concerns, upon people of quicker minds, who would 
by nature be disposed to relish them. Probably the 
Irish themselves, though they are gainers by the 
thing, yet laugh in their sleeves at the pedantries 
and formalities with which our love of liberty, 
Murdstone and Quinion's love of liberty, and our 
total want of instinct for logic and lucidity, em- 
barrass our attempts to coerce them. Certainly they 
must have laughed outright, being people with a 
keen sense of the ridiculous, when in the information 
to which the traversers had to plead at the late trials, 
it was set forth that the traversers "did conspire, 
combine, confederate, and agree together, to solicit, 
incite, and procure," and so on. We must be 
Englishmen, countrymen of Murdstone and Quinion, 
loving liberty and a " freedom broadening slowly 
down from precedent to precedent," — not fastidious 
about modern and rational forms of speech, about 
logic and lucidity, or much comprehending how other 
people can be fastidious about them, — to take such a 
jargon with proper seriousness. 

The dislike of Ireland for England the resistance 
of a lower civilisation to a higher one ! Why, 
everywhere the attractions of this middle-class civili- 
sation of ours, which is what we have really to offer 
in the way of civilisation, seem to fail of their effect. 
" The puzzle seems to be," says the Times mournfully, 
" where we are to look for our friends." But there 
is no great puzzle in the matter if we will consider it 



328 lEISH ESSAYS. [i. 

without pedantry. Our civilisation, as it looks to 
outsiders, and in so far as it is a thing broadly 
communicable, seems to consist very much in the 
Murdstonian drive in business and the Murdstonian 
religion, on the one hand, and in the Quinionian 
joviality and geniality, on the other. Wherever we 
go, we put forward Murdstone and Quinion, and call 
their ways civilisation. Our governing class nervously 
watch the ways and wishes of Murdstone and Quinion, 
and back up their civilisation all they can. But do 
what we will, this civilisation does not prove attractive. 
The English in South Africa "will all be com- 
mercial gentlemen," says Lady Barker, ^commercial 
gentlemen like Murdstone and Quinion. Their wives 
will be the ladies of commercial gentlemen, they will 
not even tend poultry. The English in the Trans- 
vaal, we hear again, contain a wonderful proportion of 
attorneys, speculators, land-jobbers, and persons whose 
antecedents will not well bear inspection. Their 
recent antecedents we will not m^dle with, but one 
thing is certain : their early antecedents were those 
of the English middle class in general, those of 
Murdstone and Quinion. They have almost all, we 
may be very sure, passed through the halls of a Salem 
House and the hands of a Mr. Creakle. They have 
the stamp of either Murdstone or Quinion. Indeed 
we are so prolific, so enterprising, so world-covering, 
and our middle class and its civilisation so entirely 
take the lead wherever we go, that there is now, one 
may say, a kind of odour of Salem House all round 
the globe. It is almost inevitable that Mr. Sprigg 
should have been reared in some such establishment ; 
it is ten to one that Mr. Berry is an old pupil of Mr. 
Creakle. And when they visit Europe, no doubt 
they go and see Mr. Creakle, where he is passing the 
evening of his days in honourable 



I.] THE INCOMPATIBLES. 329 

Middlesex magistrate, a philanthropist, and a member 
of the Society of Arts. And Mr. Berry can tell his 
old master of a happy country all peopled by our- 
selves, where the Murdstone and Quinion civilisation 
seems to men the most natural thing in the world 
and the only right civilisation, and where it gives 
entire satisfaction. But poor Mr. Sprigg has to 
report of a land plagued with a large intermixture 
of foreigners, to whom our unique middle-class civilisa- 
tion does not seem attractive at all, but they find it 
entirely disagreeable. And so, too, to come back 
much nearer home, do the Irish. 

So that if we, who are in consternation at the 
dismal prophecies we hear concerning what is in 
store for Ireland and England, if we determine, as I 
say, to perish in the light at any rate, to abjure all 
self-deception, and to see things as they really are, 
we shall see that our civilisation, in its present state, 
will not help us much with the Irish. Now, even 
though we ga.ve them really healing measures, yet 
still, estranged as the Irish at present are, it would 
be further necessary to manage their tempers and 
cultivate their good affections by the gift of a common 
civilisation congenial to them. But our civilisation 
is not congenial to them. To talk of it, therefore, 
as a substitute for perfectly healing measures is 
ridiculous. Indeed, the pedantry, bigotry, and nar- 
rowness of our middle -class, which disfigure the 
civilisation we have to offer, are also the chief obstacle 
to our offering measures perfectly healing. And the 
conclusion is, that our middle class and its civilisation 
require to be transformed. With all their merits, 
which I have not here much insisted upon, because the 
question was, how their demerits make them to be 
judged by unfriendly observers, — with all their merits, 
they require, as I have so often said, to be trans- 



330 IMSH ESSAYS. [i. 

formed. And for my part I see no way so promising 
for setting about it as the abolishment of Salem 
House and of Mr. Creakle. This initiatory stage 
governs for them in a great degree all the rest, and 
with this initiatory stage we should above all deal. 

I think I hear people saying : There ! he has got 
on his old hobby again ! Eeally, people ought rather 
to commend the strictly and humbly practical char- 
acter of my writings. It was very well for Mr. 
Carlyle to bid us have recourse, in our doubts and 
miseries, to earnestness and reality, and veracity and 
the everlasting yea, and generalities of that kind ; 
Mr. Carlyle was a man of genius. But when one is 
not a man of genius, and yet attempts to give counsel 
in times of difficulty, one should be above all things 
practical. Now, our relations with Ireland will not 
in any case be easily and soon made satisfactory; 
but while our middle class is what it is now, they 
never will. And our middle class, again, will not be 
easily and soon transformed ; but while it gets its 
initiation to life through Salem House and Mr. 
Creakle, it never will. 

The great thing is to initiate it to life by means 
of public schools. Public schools for the middle 
classes are not a panacea for our ills. No, but they 
are the indispensable preliminary to our real improve- 
ment on almost all the lines where as a nation we 
now move with embarrassment. If the consideration 
of our difficulties with Ireland had not, like so much 
else, brought me at last full upon this want^ — which 
is capital, but far too little remarked, — I should 
probably not have ventured to intrude into the 
discussion of them. However terrified and dejected 
by the alarmists, I should have been inclined to bear 
my burden silently in that upper chamber in Grub 
Street, where I have borne in silence so many sorrows. 



I.] THE mCOMPATIBLES. 331 

I know that the professional people find the inter- 
vention of outsiders very trying in politics, and I 
have no wish to provoke their resentment. But 
when the discussion of any matter tends inevitably 
to show the crying need which there is for transform- 
ing our middle class education, I cannot forbear from 
striking in ; for if I do not speak of the need shown, 
nobody else will. 

Yet the need is, certainly, great and urgent 
enough to attract notice. But then our middle class 
is very strong and self-satisfied, and every one flatters 
it. It is like that strong and enormous creature 
described by Plato, surrounded by obsequious people 
seeking to understand what its noises mean, and to 
make in their turn the noises which may please it. 
At best, palliatives are now and then attempted ; as 
there is a company, I believe, at this moment projected 
to provide better schools for the middle classes. 
Alas, I should not be astonished to find presently 
Mr. Creakle himself among the directors of a com- 
pany to provide better schools for the middle classes, 
and the guiding spirit of its proceedings ! so far, at 
least, as his magisterial functions, and his duties on 
philanthropical committees, and on committees of 
the Society of Arts, permit him to take part in them. 
But oftener our chief people take the bull by the 
horns, and actually congratulate the middle class on 
the character and conditions of its education. And 
so they play the part of a sort of spiritual pander to 
its defects and weaknesses, and do what in them lies 
to perpetuate them. Lord Frederick Cavendish goes 
down to Shefiield, to address an audience almost 
entirely trained by Salem House and by Mr. Creakle, 
and the most suitable thing he can find to say to 
them is, he thinks, to congratulate them on their 
energy and self-reliance in being so trained, and to 



332 lEISH ESSAYS. [i. 

give them to understand that he himself, if he were 
not Lord Frederick Cavendish, brought up at Cam- 
bridge, would gladly be Murdstone or Quinion, 
brought up by Mr. Creakle. But this is an old 
story, a familiar proceeding, for which the formula 
has long since been given : namely, that the upper 
class do not want to be disturbed in their preponder- 
ance, nor the middle class in their vulgarity. But if 
we wish cordially to attach Ireland to the English 
connection, not only must we offer healing political 
measures, we must also, and that as speedily as we 
can, transform our middle class and its social cvilisa- 
tion. 

I perceive that I have said little of faults on the 
side of the Irish, as I have said little of the merits 
which accompany, in our middle class, their failure 
in social civilisation. And for the same reason, — 
because the matter in hand was the failure on our 
part to do all in our power to attach Ireland, and 
how to set about remedying that failure. But as I 
have spoken with so much frankness of my own 
people and kindred, the Irish will allow me, perhaps, 
to end with quoting three queries of Bishop Berke- 
ley's, and with recommending these to our atten- 
tion : — 

"1. Whether it be not the true interest of both 
nations to become one people, and whether either be 
sufficiently apprised of this 1 

" 2. Whether Ireland can propose to thrive so 
long as she entertains a wrong-headed distrust of 
England ? 

" 3. Whether in every instance by which the 
Irish prejudice England, they do not in a greater 
degree prejudice themselves "? " 

Perhaps, our Irish friends might do well also to 
perpend the good bishop's caution against " a general 



I.] THE INCOMPATIBLES. 333 

parturiency in Ireland with respect to politics and 
public counsel ; " a parturiency which in clever young 
Irishmen does often, certainly, seem to be excessive. 
But, after all, my present business is not with the 
Irish but with the English ; — to exhort my country- 
men to healing measures and an attractive form of 
civilisation. And if one's countrymen insist upon it, 
that found to be sweet and attractive their form of 
civilisation is, or, if not, ought to be, then we who 
think differently must labour diligently to follow 
Burke's injunctions, and to "dispose people to a 
better sense of their condition." 



11. 

AN UNEEGAEDED lEISH GEIEVANCE. 

In 1796, the very year before his death, when the 
political prospect for the people of Ireland seemed 
desperate, and all political struggle on their part 
useless and impotent, Burke wrote to an Irishman as 
follows : — 

''I should recommend to the middle-ranks, in which I in- 
clude not only all merchants, but all farmers and tradesmen, 
that they would change as much as possible those expensive 
modes of living and that dissipation to which our countrymen 
in general are so much addicted. It does not at all become 
men in a state of persecution. They ought to conform them- 
selves to the circumstances of a people whom Government is 
resolved not to consider as upon a par with their fellow-subjects. 
Favour they will have none. They must aim at other resources, 
and to make themselves independent in fact before they aim at 
a nominal independence. Depend upon it, that with half the 
privileges of the others, joined to a different system of manners, 
they would grow to a degree of importance to which, without 
it, no privileges could raise them, much less any intrigues or 
factious practices. I know very well that such a discipline, 
among so numerous a people, is not easily introduced, but I 
am sure it is not impossible. If I had youth and strength, I 
would go myself over to Ireland to work on that plan ; so 
certain I am that the well-being of all descriptions in the 
kingdom, as well as of themselves, depends upon a reformation 



II.] AN UNREGARDED IRISH GRIEVANCE. 335 

amongst the Catholics. The work will be sure and slow in its 
operation, but it is certain in its effect. There is nothing which 
will not yield to perseverance and method." 

Whether a sumptuary reform in the habits of the 
middle classes in Ireland is a crying need of the 
present liour, I have no sufficient means of judging. 
If it is, it is not a reform which we can well isolate 
from other needs, can well pursue by itself alone, and 
directly. It is a reform which must depend upon 
enlarging the minds and raising the aims of those 
classes ; upon humanising and civilising them. Ex- 
pense in living, dissipation, are the first and nearest 
dangers, perhaps, to the Irish middle class, while its 
civilisation is low, because they are its first and 
nearest pleasures. They can only cease to be its first 
and nearest pleasures, if now they are so, by a rise in 
its standard of life, by an extending and deepening of 
its civilisation. 

True, this greatly needs to be done. True, the 
improvement of Ireland, the self-government of Ire- 
land, must come mainly through the middle class, and 
yet this class, defective in civilisation as it now is, is 
not ripe for the functions required of it. Its members 
have indeed to learn, as Burke says, "to make them- 
selves independent in fad before they aim at a nominal 
independence." But not Ireland alone needs, alas, 
the lesson ; we in England need it too. In England, 
too, power is passing away from the now governing 
class. The part to be taken in English life by the 
middle class is difterent from the part which the 
middle class has had to take hitherto, — difterent, 
more public, more important. Other and greater 
functions devolve upon this class than of old ; but its 
defective civilisation makes it unfit to discharge them. 
It comes to the new time and to its new duties, it 
comes to them, as its flatterers will never tell it, but 



336 IRISH ESSAYS. [ii. 

as it must nevertheless bear to be told and well to 
consider, — it comes to them with a defective type of 
religion, a narrow range of intellect and knowledge, a 
stunted sense of beauty, a low standard of manners. 

The characters of defective civilisation in the Irish 
middle class are not precisely the same as in the 
English. But for the faults of the middle class in 
Ireland, as in England, the same remedy presents 
itself to start with ; not a panacea by any means, not 
all-sufficient, not capable of working miracles of 
change in a moment, but yet a remedy sure to do 
good ; the first and simplest and most natural remedy 
to apply, although it is left singularly out of sight, 
and thought, and mention. The middle class in both 
England and Ireland is the worst schooled middle 
class in Western Europe. Surely this may well have 
something to do with defects of civilisation ! Surely 
it must make a difference to the civilisation of a 
middle class, whether it is brought up in ignoble 
schools where the instruction is nearly worthless, or 
in schools of high standing where the boy is carried 
through a well-chosen course of the best that has been 
known and said in the world ! I, at any rate, have 
long been of opinion that the most beneficent reform 
possible in England, at present, is a reform about 
which hardly anybody seems to think or care, — the 
establishment of good public schools for the middle 
classes. 

Most salutary for Ireland also would be the estab- 
lishment of such schools there. In what state is the 
actual supply of schools for the middle classes in 
Ireland, we learn from a' report lately published by a 
very acute observer, Professor Mahaffy, of Trinity 
College, Dublin. I propose to give here a short 
account of what he tells us, and to add a few thoughts 
which suggest themselves after reading him. 



II.] AN UNEEGARDED lEISH GRIEVANCE. 337 

Professor Mahaffy was appointed by the Endowed 
Schools Commission in 1879 to visit and report upon 
the Grammar Schools of Ireland. He inspected the 
buildings and accommodations, attended the classes, 
examined the pupils ; and he also visited some of the 
principal Grammar Schools in England, such as 
Winchester, Marlborough, Uppingham, and the City 
of London School, to provide himself with a definite 
standard of comparison. Professor Mahafiy is a man, 
as is well known, of brilliant attainments ; he has 
had, also, great practical experience in teaching, and 
he writes with a freshness, plainness, and point which 
make his report very easy and agreeable reading. 

The secondary schools of Ireland are classified by 
Professor Mahafiy as follows : the Eoyal Schools, the 
lesser schools managed by the Commissioners of Edu- 
cation, the Erasmus Smith's schools, the Incorporated 
Society's schools, the Protestant diocesan schools, the 
schools with private endowments, the Roman Catholic 
colleges, and the unendowed schools. He visited 
schools of each class. In all or almost all of them he 
found the instruction profoundly aff'ected by the rules 
of the Intermediate Schools Commissioners. His 
report is full of remarks on the evil working of the 
examinations of this Intermediate Board, and he 
appears to consider the most important part of his 
business, as reporter, to be the delivering of his testi- 
mony against them. The Board arose, as is well 
known, out of the desire to do something for inter- 
mediate education in Ireland without encountering 
what is called the religious difficulty. " The Liberal 
party has emphatically condemned religious endow- 
ment j the Protestants of Great Britain are emphati- 
cally hostile to the endowment of Catholicism in any 
shape or form." We have all heard these parrot 
cries till one is sick of them. Schools, therefore, 
VOL. IV. Z 



338 lEISH ESSAYS. [ii. 

were not to be founded or directly aided, because this 
might be an endowment of Catholicism ; but a system 
of examinations and prizes was established, whereby 
Catholic schools may be indeed aided indirectly, but 
so indirectly, it seems, as to suffer the consciences of 
the Protestants of Great Britain to remain at peace. 
Only this system of examinations and prizes, while 
good for the consciences of the Protestants of Great 
Britain, is very bad, in Professor Mahaffy's opinion, 
for the Irish schools. He insists on its evil effects in 
the very first page of his report, in speaking of the 
Eoyal School of Armagh, the chief of the Royal 
Schools, and the school with which he begins. He 
says : — 

"Under the rules of the Intermediate Commissioners it is 
found more advantageous to answer in a number of unimportant 
subjects, of wbich a hastily learned smattering suffices, than to 
study with earnestness the great subjects of education, — classics 
and mathematics. Hence, boys spend every leisure moment, 
and even part of their proper school-time, in learning little 
text-books on natural science, music, and even Irish, to the 
detriment of their solid progress. This is not all. Owing to 
the appointing of fixed texts in classics and the paucity of new 
passages in the examination, the boys are merely crammed in 
the appointed texts without being taught real scholarship. 
"When examining a senior division in classics, I observed that 
they all brought up annotated texts, in fact so fully annotated 
that every second clause was translated for them ; and upon 
observing this to the master, he replied that he knew the evil, 
but that he could not get them through the intermediate course 
in any other way. " 

All through the report this is Professor Mahaffy's 
great and ever-recurring complaint : " The multipli- 
cation of subjects supported by the Intermediate 
Board ! which suit inaccurate and ill-taught pupils 
far better than those who learn the great subjects 



J 



II.] AN UNREGARDED IRISH GRIEVANCE. 339 

thoroughly." Everywhere it struck him, that "the 
boys, even when not over-worked, were addled with 
a quantity of subjects. They are taught a great 
many valuable truths ; but they have not assimilated 
them, and- only answer by accident. I have found 
this mental condition all over the country." He 
calls the intermediate examinations " the lowest and 
poorest of all public competitions." The more intelli- 
gent of the schoolmasters, he says, condemn them : — 

" The principal (of the French college at Blackrock) has very- 
large and independent views about education, which are well 
worthy of serious attention. He objects altogether to the inter- 
mediate examinations, and says that his profession is ruined by 
the complete subjugation of all school-work to the fixed pro- 
gramme, which is quite insufficient to occupy the better boys 
for a year, and which thus seriously impaii's their progi-ess. He 
also protests against the variety of unimportant subjects which 
produce fees for results, and thinks that a minimum of at least 
thirty-five per cent should be struck off the answering, if these 
subjects are retained." 

However, " the false stimulus now supplied in the 
system of intermediate examinations established by 
Government " is too strong to be resisted : — 

**So strong a mercenary spirit has been excited both in 
masters and parents by this system, that all the schools in Ire- 
land with one exception (the Friends' School in Waterford) have 
been forced into the competition ; every boy is being taught the 
intermediate course, every error in the management of that 
course is affecting the whole country, and the best educator is 
unable to stem the tide, or do more than protest against any of 
the defects." 

Professor Mahaflfy is a hearty admirer of the great 
English public schools. He is of opinion, " that what 
distinguishes the Englishman, all over the world, 
above men of equal breeding and fortune in other 



340 IRISH ESSAYS. [ii. 

nations, is the training of those peculiar common- 
wealths, in which boys form a sort of constitution, 
and govern themselves under the direction of a higher 
authority." But he thinks that the over-use of prize- 
competitions and examinations is doing harm in the 
great English schools too, though they are not yet 
enslaved by it as the Irish schools are : — 

" I find that by the spirit of the age, and the various require- 
ments of many competitions, both English and Irish Schools 
have been driven into the great vice of multiplying subjects of 
instruction, and so crowding together hours of diverse teaching 
that the worst results must inevitably ensue. There is, in the 
first place, that enervating mental fatigue and consequent ill- 
health which is beginning to attract attention. When I visited 
Winchester it was easy to distinguish in a large class the boys 
who had won their way into the foundation by competition ; 
they were remarkable for their worn and unhealthy looks. This 
evil, however, the evil of over-work at examination-courses, has 
already excited public attention, and is, I trust, in a fau- way of 
being remedied. Nor did it strike me as at all so frequent, in 
Irish schools, as another mischief arising from the same cause. 
It rather appeared to me all over Ireland, and England also, 
that the majority of boys, without being over-worked, were 
addled hy the multiplicity of their subjects, and instead of 
increasing their knowledge had utterly confused it. When- 
ever I asked the masters to point me out a brilliant boy, they 
replied that the race had died out. Is it conceivable that this 
arises from any inherent failing of the stock, and not rather 
from some great blundering in the system of om' education ? 
The great majority of thoughtful educators with whom I con- 
ferred agreed that it was due to this constant addition of new 
subjects ; — to the cry after English grammar and English litera- 
ture, and French and German, and natural science ; to the 
subdivision of the wretched boys' time into two hours in the 
week for this, two hours for that, alternate days for this, alter- 
nate days for that ; in fact, to an injurious system of so teaching 
him everything that he can reason intelligently in nothing. I 
cannot speak too strongly of the melancholy impression forced 
upon me by the examination of many hundred boys in various 



II.] AN UNREGARDED IRISH GRIEVANCE. 341 

schools through England and Ireland. I sought in vain for 
bright promise, for quick intelligence, for keen sympathy with 
their studies. It was not, I am sure, the boys' fault nor the 
masters'. It is the result of the present boa-constrictor system 
of competitive examination which is strangling our youth in its 
fatal embrace." 

Professor Mahaffy finds fault with the Irish 
secondary schools as too often dirty and untidy, and 
ill-provided -with proper accommodations. " White- 
washing, painting, and scouring of floors are urgently 
needed ; indeed an additional supply of soap to the 
boys would not come amiss." He notices the Jesuit 
College of St. Stanislaus, and a school at Portarlington, 
as signal exceptions. In general "the floors are so 
filthy as to give a grimy and disgusting appearance 
to the whole room ; people are so accustomed to this 
in aU Irish schools that they wonder at my remarking 
it." At the chief of the Erasmus Smith's Schools, 
the high school in Dublin, " I was detained," he tells 
us, " some time at the door, owing to the deafness of 
the porter, and thus having ample leisure to inspect 
the front of the house, found that the exceeding dirt 
of the windows made it pre-eminent, even among its 
shabbiest neighbours. I learned, on inquiry, that 
most of the window-sashes are not movable. It is 
surprising that the members of the Board are not 
offended by this aspect of squalor and decay. I 
found the playground a mass of mud, which was 
carried on the boys' boots all through the stairs and 
school-rooms, thus making the inside of the house 
correspond with the outside." Professor Mahaffy 
finds fault with the "wretched system of manage- 
ment" which prevails in the Endowed Schools, — a 
system which prevents needful reforms, which per- 
petuates inefficient arrangements and perpetuates the 
employment of incompetent teachers, "old and 



I:' \ 



342 IRISH ESSAYS. [it. 

wearied men." Those who elect the master, he says 
of the Clonmel School, " are two absent lords ; and I 
suppose a more unlikely Board to select a good 
schoolmaster could not easily be found. In the 
present case a rule has been followed the very 
opposite of that which prevails in England. There a 
schoolmaster retires upon a living ; here a clergyman 
has retired from a living upon a school." In another 
school, where the head -master is well qualified, 
Professor MahafFy finds the assistant-master stopping 
the way : — 

" But when we come to the assistant-master we find things 
in a deplorable condition. He holds his place by appointment 
of the patron, and is not removable by the head-master or Com- 
missioners, or perhaps by any one. The present usher is a man 
of about eighty or ninety years of age, indeed he may possibly 
be one hundred ; he is so dull and shrivelled with age that he 
only comes in late and is unable to teach anything. I do not 
think he comprehended who I was or what I wanted. His 
appointment dates from the remote past, and when I asked 
what his qualifications were or had once been, I could learn 
nothing but some vague legends about his great severity in early 
youth ; in fact, I was told he had OTice pult the ear off a hoy. 
But these were venerable traditions." 

Finally, Professor Mahaffy finds fault with that 
which is our signal deficiency in England also, the 
want of all general organisation of the service of 
secondary instruction, of all co-ordination of the 
existing resources scattered over the country : — 

"The general impression produced by a survey of the Irish 
Grammar Schools is this, that while there are many earnest and 
able men engaged in teaching and in improving the condition 
of education, all these efforts are individual efforts or scattered 
efforts, and the results produced are vastly inferior to those 
which might be expected from the existing national endowments 



1 



II.] AN UNEEGAEDED lEISH GEIEVANCE. 343 

both of money and of talent. For the Irish nation, with all its 
patent faults, is a clever nation ; Irish boys are above the 
average in smartness and versatility. If the system of educa- 
tion were at all perfect, great intellectual results might fauiy 
be expected." 

Still, the tjTanny of the intermediate course, and 
the bad effects it is producing on the Irish schools, 
are so completely the governing idea in our reporter's 
mind, that after enumerating all other hindrances to 
secondary instruction in Ireland, he cannot but return 
to this chief hindrance and conclude with it. He 
laments that the better endowed schools, at any rate, 
were not excluded by the Act from competing, and 
from ruining their school-course accordingly : — 

" For my own part, I feel constrained to recommend (to Irish 
parents for their sons) schools in England or elsewhere, where 
this enslaving system has not penetrated. It may no doubt act 
as a great stimulus to bad schools, and to a low type of scholars, 
who had otherwise been subject to no test whatever. To all 
higher schools, and to the higher class of boys who desire and 
deserve a real education in literature and science, this com- 
petition is an almost unmixed evil. To the real schoolmaster, 
who desires to develop the nature of his boys after his own 
fashion and by his own methods, such a system is a death-blow. 
The day will yet come, when men will look back on the mania 
in our legislation for competition as the anxious blundering of 
honest reformers, who tried to cure the occasional abuses of 
favouritism by substituting universal hardships, and to raise 
the tone of lower education by levelling down the higher, by 
substituting diversity for depth, and by destroying all that 
freedom and leisure in learning which are the true conditions of 
solid and lasting culture." 

Professor Mahaffy admires, as I have said, the 
pubHc schools in England, and envies us them 
greatly. "The English public school," he says, 
" remains and will remain a kind of training place to 



344 IRISH ESSAYS. [ii. 

which no nation in Europe, not to say the Irish, can 
show a parallel." I agree with him in admiring our 
great public schools ; still, the capital failure of 
Ireland, in regard to secondary instruction, is ex- 
hibited by us also. We have indeed good schools in 
England, expensive but good, for the boys of the 
aristocratic and landed class, and of the higher 
professional classes, and for the sons of wealthy 
merchants and manufacturers. But it is not difficult 
to provide good schools for people who can and will, 
in considerable numbers, pay highly for them. Irish 
parents who belong to the aristocratic and landed 
class, or to the higher professional classes, or to the 
class of wealthy merchants and manufacturers, can 
and do send their sons to our English public schools, 
and get them well trained and taught there. Pro- 
fessor Mahaffy approves of their doing so. "It is 
not in the least surprising that Irish parents who can 
afford it should choose this system for the education 
of their boys. No foolish talk about patriotism, no 
idle rant about absenteeism, can turn any conscien- 
tious parent from studying, above all, his children's 
welfare, and if he visits the great public schools of 
England he will certainly be impressed with their 
enormous superiority." 

I cannot myself see any disadvantage, or anything 
but advantage, to an Irish boy in being trained at 
one of the English public schools. If, therefore, the 
middle class in Ireland could as a whole afford to use 
these schools, I should not bemoan its condition, or 
busy myself about reforming the state of secondary 
instruction in Ireland. . But if cannot. The bulk of 
the middle class in Ireland cannot, and the bulk of 
the middle class in England cannot either. The real 
weak point in the secondary instruction of both 
countries is the same. M. Gambetta is the son, I am 



II.] AN UNREGARDED IRISH GRIEVANCE. 345 

told, of a tradesman at Cahors, and he was brought 
up in the hjde of Cahors ; a school not so delightful 
and historic as Eton, certainly, but witli a status as 
honourable as that of Eton, and with a teaching on 
the whole as good. In what kind of schools are the 
sons of tradesmen in England and Ireland brought 
up 1 They are brought up in the worst and most 
ignoble secondary schools in Western Europe. Ire- 
land has nothing to envy us here. For the great 
bulk of our middle class, no less than for the great 
bulk of hers, the school -provision is miserably in- 
adequate. 

It can only become adequate by being treated as 
a public service, as a service for which the State, the 
nation in its collective and corporate character, is 
responsible. This proposition I have often advanced 
and sufficiently expounded. To me its truth seems 
self-evident, and the practice of other countries is 
present, besides, to speak for it. I am not going to 
enlarge upon this theme now. I want rather to point 
out how it comes to pass, that in England and Ireland 
the truth is not accepted and acted upon, and what 
difference there is, in this respect, between the case 
of England and that of Ireland. 

In England, secondary instruction is not a public 
service, popular politicians and speakers at public 
meetings would tell us, because of the individual 
energy and self-reliance of the Englishman, and his 
dislike to State-interference. No doubt there is in 
the Englishman a repugnance to being meddled with, 
a desire to be let alone. No doubt he likes to act 
individually whenever he can, and not to have recourse 
to action of a collective and corporate character. To 
make even popular education a public service was 
very difficult. It is only a few years since one might 
hear State-aided elementary schools described as 



346 IRISH ESSAYS. [ii. 

schools with the State-taint upon them. However, 
the expediency and necessity of making popular 
education a public service grew to appear so manifest, 
that the repugnance was overcome. So far as our 
popular education is concerned, the reproach of State- 
taint has disappeared from people's mouths and minds. 
Now, to make middle -class education a public 
service is only less expedient and necessary than to 
make popular education a public service. But, as to 
popular education, the light has dawned upon the 
community here in England ; as to middle -class 
education, it has not. To talk of the State-taint in 
this case is still popular j and a prominent member 
of the governing class, such as Lord Frederick 
Cavendish, will go and extol a middle-class audience, 
composed of people with a defective type of religion, 
a narrow range of intellect and knowledge, a stunted 
sense of beauty, a low standard of manners, — he will 
positively go and extol them for their energy and 
self-reliance in not adopting the means most naturally 
and directly fitted to lift them out of this imperfect 
state of civilisation, and will win their delighted 
applause by doing so. 

This is a phenomenon of our social politics which 
receives its explanation, as I have often said, only 
when we consider that the upper class amongst us 
does not wish to be disturbed in its preponderance, 
or the middle class in its vulgarity. Not that Lord 
Frederick Cavendish does not speak in perfect good 
faith. He takes as a general rule the native English 
conviction that to act individually is a wholesome 
thing, and thinks that he cannot be wrong in applying 
it in any novel case that may arise. Still, at the 
bottom of the mind of our governing class is an 
instinct, on this matter of education, telling it that a 
really good and public education of the middle class 



II.] AN UNREGARDED IRISH GRIEVANCE. 347 

is the surest means of removing, in the end, those 
inferiorities which at present make our middle class 
impossible as a governing class, and our upper class 
indispensable ; — and this removal it is not every one 
in a governing class who can desire, though every one 
ought to desire it. 

That the middle class should seek not to be dis- 
turbed in its vulgarity may seem more strange. But 
here, too, is at bottom the native English instinct 
for following one's individual course, for not being 
meddled with. Then, also, what most strongly 
moves and attaches, or has most strongly moved and 
attached hitherto, the strongest part of our middle 
class, the Puritan part, is the type of religion to 
which their nature and circumstances have since the "JY ^ 
Eeformation led them. Now, to this type of religion, ' ^ 
the State, or the nation acting as a whole in its 
collective and corporate character, has in general not 
been favourable. They are apprehensive, then, that 
to their religion a training in the schools of the State 
might not be favourable. Indeed, to the whole ,^ ^ 
narrow system of life, arising out of the peculiar ^'^ 
conjunction of the second great interest of their lives, '\/i^^M 
business, with the first great interest of their lives, , 

religion, — a system of life now become a second ' 
nature to them and greatly endeared to their hearts, 
— they are apprehensive that the wider ideas and 
larger habits of public schools might not be favourable. ^ 
And so they are, on their part, as little forward to -k/\Ji ^ 
make middle-class education a public service as the 
governing class, on their part, are little forward to do 
so. And although the necessities of the future, and a 
pressing sense of the defects of its actual civilisation, 
will in the end force the middle class to change its line ''■^' 
and to demand what it now shrinks from, yet this _ ^ 
has not happened yet, and perhaps may not happen 



348 IKISH ESSAYS. [ii. 

for some years to come, may not happen in our life- 
time. 

If, therefore, secondary instruction remains in a 
very faulty and incoherent state in England, at least 
it is by the English nation's own doing that it remains 
so. The governing class here is not seriously con- 
cerned to make it adequate and coherent ; it is, on 
the contrary, indisposed to do so. That governing 
class will do what is actually desired and demanded 
of it by the middle class, by the class on whose favour 
political power depends; but it will do no more. The 
middle class, again, the class immediately concerned, 
has not yet acquired sufficient lucidity of mind to 
desire public schools, and to demand the resolute 
investigation and appliance of the best means for 
making them good. It has no such simple and 
logical aims governing its mind in this matter. A 
coherent system of public middle-class schools it does 
not at present want at all. Aims of quite another 
sort govern our middle class whenever anything has 
to be done in regard to education. Its Protestant 
feelings must be respected, openings must be provided 
as far as possible for its children, and w^hatever is 
done must be plausible. And the governing class 
will always take good care to meet its wishes. 

Professor Mahafiy will find that the things which 
so disturb his peace as a lover of education are all 
due to this cause : that the English middle class has 
aims quite other than the direct aim of making 
education efficient, and that the governing class, in 
whatever it does, respects and consults these aims of 
the middle class. He complains of the Intermediate 
Board and its system of prizes and examinations. 
But what would he have? Something had to be 
done for Irish secondary instruction. But the 
English public was by no means simply bent on 



II.] AN UNREGARDED IRISH GRIEVANCE. 349 

doing what was best for this ; alas ! it is not even 
bent on doing what is best for its own ! Something, 
I say, had to be done in Ireland for secondary- 
instruction ; but, in doing it, the Protestant feelings 
of the public of Great Britain must before all things 
be respected. " The Liberal party has emphatically 
condemned religious endowment ; the Protestants of 
Great Britain are implacably hostile to the endow- 
ment of Catholicism in any shape or form." And 
the Government paid all due respect to these Liberal 
and Protestant feelings. Hence the Intermediate 
Board. 

The whole system of perpetual competitive ex- 
aminations everywhere, which Professor Mahaffy 
thinks so fatal, and which he attributes to the 
anxious blundering of honest reformers trying to cure 
the occasional abuses of favouritism, is he right in so 
attributing HI Surely not; there was no such 
blundering as he speaks of, because there was no 
desire to discover and do what was positively best in 
the matter. But the great British middle-class public 
had a desire to procure as many openings as possible 
for its children, and the Government could gratify 
this desire, and also relieve itself of responsibility. 
Hence our competitive examinations. The composi- 
tion of the Boards and Commissions for Education, 
again, on which so much depends when studies have 
to be organised and programmes laid down. Professor 
Mahaffy is dissatisfied with them. He wants, he 
says, " one responsible body, not made up altogether 
of lords and bishops and judges who give their spare 
moments to such duties, but mainly of practical 
educators. No one is so likely to be led away by 
novelties as the elderly amateur in education, who 
knows nothing of its practical working, and legislates 
on specious theories. So long as Boards in Ireland 



350 IRISH ESSAYS. [it. 

are chiefly made up of people of social or political 
importance only, education will not prosper." But 
does Professor Mahafiy imagine that the British 
public has a fancy for a lucid and logical -minded 
Board, simply bent on perfecting education 1 Not at 
all ! it wants a Board that is plausible ; and the 
Government, whenever it institutes a Board, at least 
does its best to make a plausible one. Hence the 
"lords and bishops and judges;" hence the "elderly 
amateur." Professor Mahaffy anticipates that the 
new Irish University will probably be arranged like 
the Intermediate Board, and not as a lover of educa- 
tion would desire. On that point I will give no 
opinion; all I am sure of is that it will be arranged 
plausibly. That is what our middle -class public 
want, and the Government will certainly accomplish it. 

No, the great English middle-class public is at 
present by no means bent seriously on making educa- 
tion efficient all round. It prefers its routine and its 
claptrap to even its own education. It is and must 
be free to do so if it likes. We who lament its doing 
so, we who see what it loses by doing so, we can 
only resolve not to be dupes of its claptrap ourselves, 
and not to help in duping others with it, but to work 
with patience and perseverance for the evocation of 
that better spirit which will surely arise in this great 
class at last. 

Meanwhile, however, the English middle class 
sacrifices to its routine and claptrap not only its own 
education, but the education of the Irish middle class 
also. And this is certainly hard. It is hard, that 
is, if the Irish middle class is not of one mind with 
it in the matter, does not share in its routine and 
claptrap and prefer them to its own education. I 
suppose no one will dispute that the type of second- 
ary instruction in the Intermediate Board, the type 



II.] AN UNEEGAEDED lEISH GEIEVANCE. 351 

of superior instruction in the new Irish University, 
is determined by that maxim regnant, as we are told, 
in the middle class electorate of Great Britain : " The 
Liberal party has emphatically condemned religious 
endowment." And this when we have, in Great 
Britain, Oxford and Cambridge, and Eton and Win- 
chester, and the Scotch universities ! And one of the 
organs of the British Philistine expresses astonishment 
at my thinking it worth while at the present day to 
collect Burke's Irish writings, — says that the state of 
things with which Burke had to deal is now utterly 
gone, that he had to deal with Protestant ascendency, 
and that " the Catholics have now not a single cause 
of complaint." As if the Intermediate Board, as if 
the new Irish University, determined in the manner 
they are, and from the motives they are, were not in 
themselves evidences of the continued reign of Pro- 
testant ascendency ! 

But not only has Ireland a just claim not to have 
her education determined by the " Protestant feelings " 
of Great Britain. She has a just claim not to have 
it determined by other feelings, also, of our British 
public, which go to determine it now. She has a 
just claim, in short, to have it determined as she 
herself likes. It is a plea, as I have elsewhere said, 
for Home Eule, if the way of dealing with education, 
and with other like things, which satisfies our Murd- 
stones and Quinions, but does not satisfy people of 
quicker minds, is imposed on these people when they 
desire something better, because it is the way which 
our Murdstones and Quinions know and like. The 
Murdstones and Quinions of our middle class, with 
their strong individuality and their peculiar habits 
of life, do not want things instituted by the State, 
by the nation acting in its collective and corporate 
character. They do not want State schools, or State 



352 - IRISH ESSAYS. [ii. 

festivals, or State theatres. They prefer their Salem 
House, and their meeting, and their music-hall, and 
to be congratulated by Lord Frederick Cavendish 
upon their energy and self-reliance. And this is all 
very well for the Murdstones and Quinions, since 
they like to have it so. But it is hard that they 
should insist on the Irishman, too, acting as if he had 
the same peculiar taste, if he have not. 

With other nations, the idea of the State, of the 
nation in its collective and corporate character, in- 
stituting means for developing and dignifying the 
national life, has great power. Such a disposition 
of mind is also more congenial, perhaps, to the Irish 
people likewise, than the disposition of mind of our 
middle class in Great Britain. The executive Grovern- 
ment in Ireland is a very different thing from the 
executive Government in England, and has a much 
more stringent operation. But it does little, never- 
theless, in this sense of giving effect to aspirations of 
the national life for developing and raising itself. 
Dublin Castle is rather a bureau of management for 
governing the country in compliance, as far as possible, 
with English ideas. 

If the Irish desire to make the State do otherwise 
and better in Ireland than it does in England, if they 
wish their middle-class education, for instance, to be 
a public service with the organisation and guarantees 
of a public service, they may fairly claim to have 
these wishes listened to. And listened to, if they 
are clearly formed, rationally conceived, and steadily 
persisted in, such wishes ultimately must be. It 
would be too monstrous that Ireland should be 
refused an advantage which she desires, and which 
all our civilised neighbours on the Continent find 
indispensable, because the middle class in England 
does not care to claim for itself the advantage in 



I 



II.] AN UNEEGARDED IRISH GRIEVANCE. 353 

question. The great thing is for the Irish to make 
up their own minds clearly on the matter. Do they 
earnestly desire to make their middle-class education 
adequate and efficient ; to leave it no longer depend- 
ent on "individual efforts, scattered efforts;" to 
rescue it from its dirt and dilapidation, and from 
such functionaries as the aged assistant who once pult 
the ear off a hoy ? Then let them make it a public 
service. Does Professor Mahaffy wish to relieve 
Irish boys from the unintelligent tyranny of endless 
examinations and competitions, and from being 
"stupefied by a multiplicity of subjects?" Let him, 
then, get his countrymen to demand that their 
secondary instruction shall be made a public service, 
with the honest, single-minded, logically-pursued aim 
of efficiency. 

Then these questions as to studies, competitions, 
and examinations will come, — as with us at present, 
whether in England or in Ireland, they never come, 
— under responsible review by a competent mind ; 
and this is what is wanted. The " personages of high 
social standing," the " lords and bishops and judges," 
the " elderly amateur," of whom Professor Mahaffy 
complains, will cease to potter ; and we shall have, 
instead, the responsible review of a competent mind. 
Ireland will not only be doing good to herself by 
demanding this, by obtaining this ; she will also be 
teaching England and the English middle class how 
to live. 



VOL. IV 2 a 



III. 

ECCE, CONYEETIMUE AD GENTES.^ 

I CANNOT help asking myself how I come to be 
standing here to-night. It not unfrequently happens 
to me, indeed, to be invited to make addresses and 
to take part in public meetings, — above all in meet- 
ings where the matter of interest is education ; prob- 
ably because I was sent, in former days, to acquaint 
myself with the schools and education of the Conti- 
nent, and have published reports and books about 
them. But I make it a general rule to decline the 
invitation. I am a school-inspector under the Com- 
mittee of Council on Education, and the Department 
which I serve would object, and very properly object, 
to have its inspectors starring it about the country, 
making speeches on education. An inspector must 
naturally be prone to speak of that education of 
which he has particular cognisance, the education 
which is administered by his own Department, and 
he might be supposed to let out the views and policy 
of his Department. Whether the inspectors really 
knew and gave the Department's views or not, their 
speeches might equally be a cause of embarrassment 
to their ofl&cial superiors. 

However, I have no intention of compromising 
1 An Address dehvered to the Ipswich Working Men's College. 



III.] ECCE, COXVEKTBIUR AD GENTES. 355 

my oflScial superiors by talking to you about that 
branch of education which they are concerned in ad- 
ministering, — elementary education. And if I express 
a desire that they should come to occupy themselves 
with other branches of education too, branches with 
which they have at present no concern, you may be 
quite sure that this is a private wish of my own, not 
at all prompted by my Department. You may rely 
upon it, that the very last thing desired by that 
Department itself, is to invade the provinces of edu- 
cation which are now independent of it. Nobody 
will ever be able to accuse the Committee of Council 
of carrpng an Afghanistan war into those provinces, 
when it might have remained quietly within its own 
borders. There is a Latin law-maxim which tells us 
that it is the business of a good judge to seek to 
extend his jurisdiction: — Boni judicis est amjpViare 
jurisdidionem. That may be characteristic of a good 
judge, but it is not characteristic of a British Govern- 
ment in domestic affairs generally, certainly not in 
the concerns of education. 

And for this reason : because the British Govern- 
ment is an aristocratic government. Such a govern- 
ment is entirely free from the faults of what is 
commonly called a bureaucracy. It is not meddle- 
some, not fussy, not prone to seek importance for 
itself by meddling with everybody and everything ; 
it is by nature disposed to leave indi^dduals and 
localities to settle their own affairs for themselves as 
much as possible. The action of individuals and 
localities, left to themselves, proves insufficient in 
this point and in that ; then the State is forced to 
intervene. But what I say is, that in all those 
domestic matters, such as the regulation of work- 
houses, or of factories, or of schools, where the State 
has, with us, been forced to intervene, it is not our 



356 IRISH ESSAYS. [ill. 

aristocratic executive which has sought the right of 
intervention, it is public opinion which has imposed 
the duty of intervention upon our aristocratic execu- 
tive. Our aristocratic system may have its faults, 
but the mania for State -interference everywhere is 
not one of them. Above all, in regard to education 
this has been conspicuously the case. Government 
did not mxOve in the matter while it could avoid 
moving. 

Of course, even when it was at last obliged to 
move, there were some people to be found who cried 
out against it for moving. In the early days of the 
Committee of Council, one clergyman wrote that he 
was not going to suffer Lord John Eussell, " or any 
other Turkish Bashaw," to send an inspector into his 
schools ; and Archdeacon Denison threatened, as is 
well known, to have the poor inspector drowned in 
a horsepond. But these were eccentric men, living 
in a fantastic world of their own. To men who 
inhabit the real world, it was abundantly apparent 
that our Government moved in the matter of public 
education as late as it could, that it moved as slowly 
as it could, as inoffensively as it could; and that 
throughout, instead of stimulating public opinion to 
give it additional powers, it has confined itself to 
cautiously accepting and discharging the functions 
which public opinion has insisted on laying upon it. 

You may be sure that this will continue to be the 
case ; that if more part in public education comes to 
be assigned to the Government in this country, it is 
not that the Government seeks it, it is that the 
growth of opinion will compel the Government to 
undertake it. So that if I speak of the desirableness 
of extending to a further class of Schools the action 
of the State, it is well understood that I am not, as 
in bureaucratic Prussia I might be, revealing the 



N 



III.] ECCE, CONVERTIMUR AD GENTES. 357 

secret aims and ambitions of the Education Depart- 
ment. All the aims of that Department have been 
clearly manifested to be the other way. 

Well, but why am I here ? I am here, in the first 
place, because I heard that your Working Men's 
College, which holds its annual meeting to-night, and 
which I was asked to address, is the largest body of 
the kind in England. Bodies of this kind, with their 
classes, their lectures, their libraries, their aspirations, 
are a testimony, however poor and imperfect may be 
the use often made of them, they are, as it seems to 
me, a testimony, they are a profession of faith, which 
is both affecting and valuable. They are a profession 
of belief in the saving power of light and intelligence, 
a profession of belief in the use and in the practica- 
bility of trying to know oneself and the world, to 
follow, as Dante says, mrtue and knowledge. 

No one can accuse us English, as a nation, of being 
too forward with such professions of faith in the 
things of the mind. No one can accuse us of not 
showing ourselves enough aware, how little good may 
in many cases come from professions of this sort, how 
much they may disappoint us, what a contrast their 
performance often is to their promise, how much they 
often bring with them which is hollow and nonsen- 
sical. We are very shy, as every one knows, of all 
public homage to the power of science and letters. 
We have no National Institute. In a short time 
there will be held in Paris a reception, as it is called, 
of one of the most famous men of letters in France, 
or indeed in all Europe, — M. Kenan, — at the French 
Academy. That reception, and the discourse of the 
new member, will be for our neighbours over in 
France one of the very foremost events of the year. 
Hardly any parliamentary field-day will call forth 
greater interest and excitement. Every one will 



358 IRISH ESSAYS. [iii. 

want to be present, every one will be eager to know 
what is said, every one will discuss what is said. We 
English keenly feel the unreality, as we call it, which 
attends displays of this kind. We prefer that our 
own celebrations should be for incidents of a more 
practical character ; should be such as the dinner 
and speechifying, for instance, at the opening of the 
annual season for the Buckhounds. 

But above all, we are on our guard against 
expecting too much from institutions like this Work- 
ing Men's College. We are reminded what grand 
expectations Lord Brougham and the other friends 
of knowledge cheap and popular, the founders of the 
Mechanics' Institutes, held out ; what tall talk they 
indulged in ; and we are told to look and see how 
little has come of it all. Nature herself fights against 
them and their designs, we are told. At the end of 
his day, tired with his labour, the working man in 
general cannot well have the power, even if he have 
the will, to make any very serious and fruitful efforts 
in the pursuit of knowledge. Whatever high pro- 
fessions these institutions may start with, inevitably 
their members will come, it is said, to decline upon 
a lower range of claim and endeavour. They will 
come to content themselves with seeking mere amuse- 
ment and relaxation from their Institute. They will 
visit its reading-rooms merely to read the news- 
papers, to read novels ; and they are not to be blamed 
for it. 

No, perhaps they are not to be blamed for it, 
even if this does happen. And yet the original, 
lofty aspiration, the aspiration after the satisfactions, 
solace, and power which are only to be got from 
true knowledge, may have been right after all. In 
spite of the frequent disappointment, the constant 
difficulty, it may have been right. For to arrive at 



III.] ECCE, CONVERTIMUE AD GENTES. 359 

a full and right conception of things, to know one's 
self and the world, — which is knowledge; then to 
act firmly and manfully on that knowledge, — which is 
virtue ; this is the native, the indestructible impulse 
of the spirit of man. All the high-flown common- 
places about the power of knowledge, and about the 
mind's instinctive desire of it, have their great use, 
whenever we can so put them as to feel them ani- 
mating and inspiring to us. For they are true in 
themselves ; only they are discredited by being so 
often used insincerely. The profession of faith of 
institutes like your College, that knowledge is power, 
that there is an intelligible law of things, that the 
human mind seeks to arrive at it, and that our 
welfare depends on our arriving at it and obeying it, 
this profession of faith, I say, is sound in itself, it is 
precious, and we do well to insist upon it. It puts 
in due prominence a quality which does not always 
get enough regard in this country, — intelligence. 

Goethe, the great poet of Germany, and the 
greatest critic, perhaps, that has ever lived, went 
so far as to say boldly of our nation (which, not- 
withstanding, he highly esteemed and admired) : 
Der Engldnder ist eigentUch ohne IntelUgenz — "The 
Englishman is, properly speaking, without intelli- 
gence." Goethe by no means meant to say that the 
Englishman was stupid. All he meant was, that the 
Englishman is singularly without a keen sense of 
there being an intelligible law of things, and of its 
being our urgent business to ascertain it and to 
make our doings conform to it. He meant that the 
Englishman is particularly apt to take as the rule of 
things what is customary, or what falls in with his 
prepossessions and prejudices, and to act upon this 
stoutly and without any misgiving, as if it were the 
real natural rule of things. He meant that the 



360 IKISH ESSAYS. [in. 

Englishman does not much like to be told that there 
is a real natural rule of things, presenting itself to 
the intelligence ; to be told that our action, however 
energetic, is not safe unless it complies with this 
real and intelligible rule. And I think Goethe was 
right here, and that the Englishman, from his insu- 
larity, and from his strength, and from some want 
of suppleness in his mind, does often answer to the 
description which Goethe gives of him. 

Now it is a grave thing, this indifference to the 
real natural and rational rule of things, because it 
renders us very liable to be found fighting against 
nature, and that is always calamitous. And so I 
come at last to the entire reason for my being here 
to-night. There is a point, in which our action, as 
a community, seems to me quite at variance with 
what the rational rule of things would prescribe, and 
where we all suffer by its being thus at variance. I 
have tried in vain for twenty years to make the 
parties most directly concerned see the mischief of 
the present state of things. I want to interest you 
in the matter. I speak to you as a Working Men's 
College, the largest in England, representing the 
profession of faith that what we need is intelligence, 
the power to see things as they really are, and to 
shape our action accordingly. I look upon you, I 
say, as representing that profession of faith, and 
representing it as entertained by the class of working 
men. You, too, are concerned in the failure which 
I want to remedy, though not directly concerned in 
it. But you are concerned in it, and that gravely ; 
we are all gravely concerned in it. 

You will, I am sure, suffer me to speak to you 
with perfect frankness, even though what I say 
should offend some of those who hear me. My 
address is to the class of working men; but there 



III.] ECCE, CONVERTIMUR AD GENTES. 361 

are present before me to-night, I know, hearers from 
other classes too. However, the only possible use 
of my coming here would be lost if I did not speak 
to you with perfect frankness. I am no politician. 
I have no designs upon your borough, or upon any 
borough, or upon parliamentary honours at all. In- 
deed, I have no very ardent interest, — if you will 
allow me to speak for a moment of myself and of 
what interests me, — in poHtics in their present state 
in this country. What interests me is English civilis- 
ation ; and our politics in their present state do not 
seem to me to have much bearing upon that. 

English civilisation, — the humanising, the bringing 
into one harmonious and truly humane life, of the 
whole body of English society, — that is what interests 
me. I try to be a disinterested observer of all which 
really helps and hinders that. Certain hindrances 
seem to me to be present with us, and certain helps 
to be wanting to us. An isolated observer may 
easily be mistaken, and his observations greatly 
require the test which other minds can exert upon 
them. If I fail to carry you with me in what seems 
to me to be perfectly clear, that is against the 
soundness of my observations and conclusions. But 
that I may have the chance of carrying you with me, 
it is necessary that I should speak to you with entire 
frankness. Then it will appear whether your aid, 
or the aid of any among you, is to be had for 
removing what seems to me one great hindrance, 
and for providing what seems to me one great help, 
to our civilisation. 

For twenty years, then, — ever since I had to go 
about the Continent to learn what the schools were 
like there, and observed at the same time the people 
for whom the schools existed and the conditions of 
their life, and compared it with what was to be 



362 IRISH ESSAYS. [in. 

found at home, — ever since that time, I have felt 
convinced that for the progress of our civilisation, 
here in England, three things were above all necessary : 
— a reduction of those immense inequalities of con- 
dition and property amongst us, of which our land- 
system is the base ; a genuine municipal system ; 
and public schools for the middle classes. I do not 
add popular education. Even so long as twenty 
years ago, popular education was already launched. 
I was myself continually a mtness of the progress it 
was making ; I could see that the cause of popular 
education was safe. The three points, then, were 
reduction of our immense inequalities of condition and 
property, a municipal system extended all through 
the country, and public schools for the middle classes. 
These points are hardly dreamed of in our present 
politics, any one of them. 

Take the first of the three. Mr. Gladstone, who 
ought to know, ridicules the very notion of a cry for 
equality in this country; he says that the idea of 
equality has never had the slightest influence upon 
English politics ; nay, that, on the contrary, we have 
the religion of inequality. There is, indeed, a little 
bill brought forward in Parliament year after year, — 
the Eeal Estates Intestacy Bill, — which proposes 
that there should be equality in the division of a 
man's land amongst his children after his death, in 
case he happens to die without a will. It is answered, 
that if a man wants his land to go thus equally 
amongst his children, he has only just to take the 
trouble of making a will to that effect ; and that, in 
the absence of a vdll, his. land had better follow the 
rule of the present general system of landed inherit- 
ance in this country, a system which works well. 
And nothing more is said, except, perhaps, that one 
hears a few timid words of complaint about the 



III.] ECCE, CONVERTIMUR AD GENTES. 363 

hardship inflicted upon younger children by this 
system. 

But, for my part, I am not so much concerned 
about the younger children. My objection to the 
present system is not on their account ; but because 
I think that, putting their supposed natural rights 
quite out of the question, the present system does 
not work well now at all, but works altogether badly. 
I think that now, however it may have worked 
formerly, the system tends to materialise our upper 
class, vulgarise our middle class, brutalise our lower 
class. If it does not do that, I have no other 
objection to make to it. I do not believe in any 
natural rights ; I do not believe in a natural right, 
in each of a man's children, to his or her equal share 
of the father's property. I have no objection to the 
eldest son taking all the land, or the youngest son, 
or the middle daughter, on one condition : that this 
state of things shall really work well, that it shall be 
for the public advantage. 

Once our present system of landed inheritance 
had its real reason and justification, — it worked well. 
When the modern nations of Europe were slowly 
building themselves up out of the chaos left by the 
dissolution of the Eoman empire, a number of local 
centres were needed for the process, with a strong 
hereditary head-man over each; and this natural 
need the feudal land-system met. It seems to me, 
it has long seemed to me, that, the circumstances 
being now quite changed, our system of immense 
inequalities of condition and property works not well 
but badly, has the natural reason of things not for it 
but against it. It seems to me that the natural 
function is gone for which an aristocratic class with 
great landed estates was required ; and that when 
the function is gone, and the great estates with an 



364 IRISH ESSAYS. [in. 

infinitely multiplied power of ministering to mere 
pleasure and indulgence remain, the class owning 
them inevitably comes to be materialised, and the 
more so the more the development of industry and 
ingenuity augments the means of luxury. 

The action of such a class materialises all the 
class of newly enriched people as they rise. The 
middle class, having above them this materialised 
upper class, with a wealth and luxury utterly out of 
their reach, with a standard of social life and manners, 
the offspring of that wealth and luxury, seeming 
utterly out of their reach also, are inevitably thrown 
back too much upon themselves, and upon a defective 
type of civilisation. The lower class, with the upper 
class and its standard of life still farther out of their 
reach, and finding nothing to attract them or to 
elevate them in the standard of life of the middle 
classes, are inevitably, in their turn, thrown back 
upon themselves, and upon a defective type of civil- 
isation. I sj)eak of classes. In all classes, there are 
individuals with a happy nature and an instinct for 
the humanities of life, who stand out from their 
class, and who form exceptions. 

Now, the word vulgarised as applied to the middle 
class, and hrutalised as applied to the lower class, 
may seem to you very hard words. And yet some 
of you, at any rate, Avill feel that there is a found- 
ation for them. And whether you feel it or not, the 
most competent, the most dispassionate observers feel 
it, and use words about it much more contemptuous 
and harsher than mine. The question is not, whether 
yon or I may feel the truth of a thing of this kind ; 
the question is, whether the thing is really so. I 
believe that it is so ; that with splendid qualities in 
this nation at large, that with admirable exceptions 
to be found in all classes, we at present do tend to 



iiT.] ECCE, CONVERTIMUR AD GENTES. 365 

have our higher class in general materialised, our 
middle class vulgarised, and our lower class brutal- 
ised ; and that this tendency we owe to what Mr. 
Gladstone calls our religion of inequality. 

True, no one here in England combines the fact 
of the defects in our civilisation with the fact of our 
enormous inequality. People may admit the facts 
separately ; the inequality, indeed, they cannot well 
deny ; but they are not accustomed to combine them. 
But I saw, when I began to think about these matters, 
that elsewhere the best judges combined this fact of 
great social imperfection with the fact of great in- 
equality. I saw that Turgot, the best and wisest 
statesman whom France has ever had, himself one of 
the governing and fortunate class, made inequality 
answerable for much of the misery of the modern 
nations of Europe. "Everywhere," says Turgot, 
"the laws have favoured that inequality of fortunes 
which corrupts a certain number, to doom the rest 
to degradation and misery." Vehement as this 
language sounds, I saw that the spectacle France is 
described as presenting, under the old system, was 
enough to account for it. I saw that the French 
peasants, under that system, were described by a 
sober and grave authority as presenting the appear- 
ance of a number of puny, dingy, miserable creatures, 
half clad and half articulate, creeping about on the 
surface of the ground and feebly scratching it. I 
saw that Tocqueville, coming after the French Ee- 
volution, and a severe judge of its faults and of the 
faults of democracy, spoke of inequality much as 
Turgot spoke of it. "The common people is more 
uncivilised in aristocratic countries," says Tocque- 
ville, "than in others, because there, where persons 
so powerful and so rich are met with, the weak and 
the poor feel themselves overwhelmed, as it were, 



366 IKISH ESSAYS. [in. 

with the weight of their own inferiority ; not finding 
any point by which they may recover equaHty, they 
despair of themselves altogether, and suffer them- 
selves to fall into degradation." 

And then I saw the French peasant of the present 
day, who has been made by equality. There is a 
chorus of voices from all sides in praise of his con- 
dition. First, let us take, as in duty bound, your 
principal, Mr. Barham Zincke, who has been staying 
in a French peasant's home this last summer, and 
has published in the Fortnightly Review, in two de- 
lightful articles which ought to be reprinted in a 
cheap form, an account of what he beheld.^ Your 
principal says that " the dense peasant population of 
the Limagne," — the region where he was staying, in 
the heart of France, — "are, speaking of them as a 
body, honest, contented, hard-working, hardy, self- 
respecting, thrifty, and self-supporting." He gives a 
charming account of their manners and courtesy, as 
well as of their prosperity ; and he pronounces such 
a population to be a State's greatest wealth. Prince 
Bismarck appears to agree with your principal, for 
he declares that the social condition of France seems 
to have greater elements of soundness, — this well- 
being of the French peasant counting foremost 
among them all, — than the social condition of any 
other nation of Europe. A learned Belgian econo- 
mist, M. de. Laveleye, chimes in with Prince Bis- 
marck and with your principal, and declares that 
France, being the country of Europe where the soil 
is more divided than anywhere else except in Switzer- 
land and Norway, is, at the same time, the country 
.where material well-being is most widely spread, 
where wealth has of late years increased most, and 
where population is least outrunning those limits 

^ See Fortnightly Review for November and December 1878. 



III.] ECCE, CONVERTIMUR AD GENTES. 367 

which, for the comfort and progress of the working 
classes themselves, seem necessary. Finally, I come 
back again to another countryman of our own, Mr. 
Hamerton, who lives in France. He speaks of the 
French peasant just as your principal speaks of him, 
and he ends by saying : " The interval between him 
and a Kentish labourer is enormous." What, that 
black little half-human creature of the times before 
the Revolution, feebly scratching the earth's surface, 
and sunk far below the point which any English 
peasantry ever sank to, has now risen to this, that 
the interval between him and a Kentish labourer, — 
no such bad specimen of our labourers either, — is 
enormous ! And this has been brought about by 
equality. 

Therefore, both the natural reason of the thing 
and also the proof from practical experience seem to 
me to show the same thing : that for modern civilis- 
ation some approach to equality is necessary, and 
that an enormous inequality like ours is a hindrance 
to our civilisation. This to me appears so certain, 
that twenty years since, in a preface to a book about 
schools, I said that I thought so. I said the same 
thing more at length quite lately, in a lecture^ at 
the Eoyal Institution, an institution which has been 
stigmatised by a working man as being " the most 
aristocratic place in England." I repeat it here 
because it is a thing to be thought over and ex- 
amined in all its bearings, not pushed away out of 
sight. If our inequality is really unfavourable to 
our civilisation, sooner or later this will be perceived 
generally, and our inequality will be abated. It will 
be abated by some measure far beyond the scope of 
our present politics, whether by the adoption of the 

1 Published in the Fortnightly Review for March 1878, and 
reprinted in Mixed Essays with the title Equality. 



368 IRISH ESSAYS. [iii. 

French law of bequest, which now prevails so widely 
upon the Continent, or, as Mr. Mill thought prefer- 
able, by fixing the maximum of property which any 
one individual may take by bequest or inheritance, 
or in some other manner. But this is not likely to 
come in our time, nor is it to be desired that such a 
change should come while we are yet ill prepared 
for it. It is a matter to which I greatly wish to 
direct your thoughts, and to direct the thoughts of 
all who think seriously. I enlarge upon it to-night, 
because it renders so very necessary a reform in 
another line, to which I shall come finally. But it 
is not itself a matter where I want to enlist your 
help for a positive present measure to reform. 

Neither is the matter which I am next going to 
mention a matter of this kind. My second point, 
you remember, was the extension of municipal organis- 
ation throughout the whole country. No one in 
England seems to imagine that municipal govern- 
ment is applicable except in towns. All the country 
districts are supposed to require nothing more than 
the parish vestry, answering to that sort of mass- 
meeting of the parishioners in the churchyard, under 
the presidency of the parson, after service on Sundays, 
which Turgot describes in the country districts of 
France before the Revolution. Nothing, as I have 
frequently said, struck me more, both in France and 
elsewhere on the Continent, than the working of the 
municipality and municipal council as established 
everywhere, and to observe how it was the basis of 
all local afi'airs, and the right basis. For elementary 
schools, for instance, the municipal basis is un- 
doubtedly the natural and right one ; and we are 
embarrassed, and must be embarrassed, so long as 
we have not the municipal basis to use for them in 
the rural districts of this country. For the peasant, 



III.] ECCE, CONVERTIMUR AD GENTES. 369 

moreover, for the agricultural labourer, municipal 
life is a first and invaluable stage in political edu- 
cation j more helpful by far, because so much more 
constant, than the exercise of the parliamentary 
franchise. So this is my second point to which I 
should like members of institutions like yours to 
turn their thoughts, as a thing very conducive to 
that general civilisation which it is the object of all 
cultivating of our intelligence to bring about. But 
this, too, — the establishment of a genuine municipal 
system for the whole country, — will hardly, perhaps, 
come in our time ; men's minds have not yet been 
sufficiently turned to it for that. I am content to 
leave this also as a matter for thought with you. 

Not so with my third point, where I hope we 
may actually get something done in our time. I am 
sure, at all events, we need to get something actually 
done towards it in our time. I want to enlist your 
interest and help towards this object, — towards the 
actual establishment of pubhc schools for the middle 
classes. 

The topics which suggest themselves to me in re- 
commendation of this object are so numerous that I 
hardly know which of them to begin with j and yet 
I have occupied your attention a good while already, 
and I must before long come to an end of my dis- 
course. As I am speaking to a Working Men's 
College, I will begin with what is supposed to have 
most weight with people ; I will begin with the 
direct interests in this matter of yourselves and your 
class. By the establishment of pubhc schools for the 
middle classes, I mean an establishment of the same 
kind as we now have for popular education. I mean 
the provision by law, throughout the country, of a 
supply of properly guaranteed schools, in due pro- 
portion to the estimated number of the population 
VOL. IV. 2 B 



370 IRISH ESSAYS. [iii. 

requiring them ; schools giving secondary instruction, 
as it is called, — that fuller and higher instruction 
which comes after elementary instruction, — and giving 
it at a cost not exceeding a certain rate. 

Now for your direct interest in the matter. You 
have a direct interest in having facilities to rise given 
to what M. Gambetta, that famous popular leader in 
France, calls the new social strata. This rise is 
chiefly to be effected by education. Promising sub- 
jects come to the front in their own class, and they 
pass then, by a second and higher stage of education, 
into the class above them, to the great advantage of 
society. It is hardly too much to say that you and 
your class have in England no schools by which you 
can accomplish this rise if you are worthy of it. 

In France they exist everywhere. Your principal 
tells us, that he found in the village where he was 
staying in the Limagne, six village lads, peasants' 
children, who were attending the secondary schools 
in Clermont. After all their losses, after all the 
milliards they have had to pay to Germany, the 
French have been laying out more and more in the 
last few years on their public secondary schools; 
and they do not seem so much worse off in their 
pecuniary condition at this moment than practical 
nations which make no such expenditure. At this 
very time a commission is sitting in France, to 
consider whether secondary instruction may not be 
brought into closer connection with elementary in- 
struction than it is at present, by establishing schools 
more perfectly fitted than the present secondary 
schools to meet the wants of the best subjects who 
rise from the schools below. 

Now, you often see the School Boards, here in 
this country, doing what is in my opinion an unwise 
thing, making the programme of their elementary 



III.] • ECCE, CONVERTIMUR AD GENTES. 371 

schools too ambitious. The programme of the ele- 
mentary school should be strictly limited. Those 
who are capable and desirous of going higher should 
do it either by means of evening classes such as you 
have here, or by means of secondary schools. But 
why do the School Boards make this mistake 1 — for 
a mistake I think it is, and it gives occasion to the 
enemies of popular education to represent it as an 
unpractical and pretentious thing. But why do they 
make the mistake 1 They make it because, in the 
total absence in this country of public secondary 
schools, and in the inconvenience arising from this 
state of things, they are driven to make some attempt 
to supply the deficiency. Discourage, then, the School 
Boards in their attempt to make the elementary school 
what it cannot well be ; but make them join with 
you in calling for public secondary schools, which 
will accomplish properly what they are aiming at. 

But all this is socialism, we are told. An excel- 
lent man. Professor Fawcett, tells us that the most 
marked characteristic of modern socialism is belief 
in the State. He tells us that socialism and recourse 
to the action of the State go always together. The 
argument is an unfortunate one just at this moment, 
when the most judicious of French newspapers, the 
Journal des Ddhats, informs us that in France, which 
we all consider a hotbed of State-action and of cen- 
tralisation, socialism has quite disappeared. However, 
this may perhaps turn out not to be true. At any 
rate, Professor Fawcett says that the working men 
of this country cannot be too much cautioned against 
resort to the State, centralisation, bureaucracy, and 
the loss of individual liberty ; that the working class 
cannot be too much exhorted to self-reliance and 
self-help. 

Well, I should have thought that there had been no 



372 IRISH ESSAYS. [iii. 

lack of cautions and exhortations in this sense to us 
English, whether we are working men or whatever 
we may be. Why, we have heard nothing else ever 
since I can remember ! And ever since I was 
capable of reflection I have thought that such 
cautions and exhortations might be wanted else- 
where, but that giving them perpetually in England 
was indeed carrying coals to Newcastle. The 
inutility, the profound inutility, of too many of our 
Liberal politicians, comes from their habit of for 
ever repeating like parrots, phrases of this kind. In 
some countries the action of the State is insufficient, 
in others it is excessive. In France it is excessive. 
But hear a real Liberal leader, M. Gambetta, in reply 
to the invectives of doctrinaires against the State and 
its action. "I am not for the abuses of centralisation," 
said M. Gambetta at Eomans, " but these attacks on 
the State, which is France, often make me impatient. 
I am a defender of the State. I will not use the 
word centralisation ; but I am a defender of the 
national centrality, which has made the French nation 
what it now is, and which is essential to our progress." 
Englishmen are not likely, you may be sure, to let 
the State encroach too much ; they are not likely to 
be not lovers enough of individual liberty and of 
individual self-assertion. Our dangers are all the 
other way. Our dangers are in exaggerating the 
blessings of self-will and self-assertion, in not being 
ready enough to sink our imperfectly informed self- 
will in view of a large general result. 

Do not suffer yourselves, then, to be misled by 
declamations against the State, against bureaucracy, 
centralisation, socialism, and all the rest of it. The 
State is just what Burke very well called it, long 
before M. Gambetta : the nation in its collective and 
corporate character. To use the State is simply to use 



II 



'■^U 



^JL ^-4JU^ 



III.] ECCE, CONVEETIMUR AD GENTES. 373 

co-operation- of a superior kind.' All you have to ask 
yourselves is whether the object for which it is pro- 
posed to use this co-operation is a rational and useful 
one, and one likely to be best reached in this manner. 
Professor Fawcett says that socialism's first lesson is, 
that the working man can acquire capital without 
saving, through having capital supplied to him by 
the State, which is to serve as a fountain of wealth 
perennially flowing without human effort. Well, to 
desire to use the State for that object is irrational, 
vain, and mischievous. Why? Because the object 
itself is irrational and impossible. But to use the 
State in order to get, through that high form of co- 
operation, better schools and better guaranteed schools 
than you could get without it, is rational, because the 
object is rational. The schools may be self-supporting 
if you like. The point is, whether by their being 
public schools, State schools, they are or are not 
likely to be better schools, and better guaranteed, 
than you could get in any other way. Indisputably 
they are likely to be better, and to give better 
guarantees. Well, then, this use of the State is a 
use of co-operation of a very powerful kind for a 
good and practicable purpose ; and co-operation in 
itself is peculiarly of advantage, as I need not tell 
you, to the middling and ill off. Eely upon it that 
we English can use the State without danger ; and 
that for you to be deceived by the cry against State- 
interference is to play the game of your adversaries, 
and to prolong for yourselves a condition of certain 
inferiority. 

But I will ask you to do more than to consider 
your own direct interest in the establishment of 
public schools for the middle classes. I will ask you 
to consider the general interest of the community. 
The friends and flatterers of the middle classes, — 



374 IRISH ESSAYS. [iii. 

and they have many friends and flatterers, — have 
been in the habit of assuring us, that the predomi- 
nance of the middle classes was all that we required 
for our well-doing. Mr. Bright, a man of genius, 
and who has been a great power in this country, has 
always seemed to think that to insure the rule of the 
middle classes in this country would be to bring 
about the millennium. Perhaps the working class 
has not been without its flatterers too, who have 
assured it that it ought to rule because it was so 
admirable. But you will observe, that my great 
objection to our enormous inequality, and to our aristo- 
cratic system, is not that it keeps out from power 
worthier claimants of it, but that it so grievously 
mars and stunts both our middle class and our lower 
class, so keeps them in imperfection. It is not the 
faults and imperfections of our present ruling class itself 
which strike me so much. Its members have plenty 
of faults and imperfections, but as a whole they are 
the best, the most energetic, the most capable, the 
honestest upper class which the world has ever seen. 
"What strikes me is the bad eff'ect of their rule upon 
others. 

The middle classes cannot assume rule as they are 
at present, — it is impossible. And yet in the rule of 
this immense class, this class with so many correspond- 
ences, communications, and openings into the lower 
class, lies our future. There I agree with Mr. Bright. 
But our middle class, as it is at present, cannot take 
the lead which belongs to it. It has not the qualifi- 
cations. Seriousness it has, the better part of it ; it 
may even be said to have sacrificed everything to 
seriousness. And of the seriousness and of the sense 
for conduct in this nation, which are an invaluable 
treasure to it, and a treasure most dangerously want- 
ing elsewhere, the middle classes are the stronghold. 



I 



III.] ECCE, CONVERTIMUR AD GENTES. 375 

But they have lived in a narrow world of their own, 
without openness and flexibility of mind, without 
any notion of the variety of powers and possibilities 
in human life. They know neither man nor the 
world ; and on all the arduous questions presenting 
themselves to our age, — political questions, social 
questions, the labour question, the religious question 
— they have at present no light, and can give none. 
I say, then, they cannot fill their right place as they 
are now; but you, and I, and every man in this 
country, are interested in their being able to fill it. 

How are they to be made able? Well, schools 
are something. Schools are not everything ; and 
even public schools, when you get them, may be far 
from perfect. Our public elementary schools are far 
from perfect. But they throw into circulation year 
by year among the working classes, — and here is the 
great merit of Mr. Forster's Act, — a number of young 
minds trained and intelligent, such as you never got 
previously ; and this must tell in the long run. Our 
public secondary schools, when we get them, may be 
far from perfect. But they will throw into circula- 
tion year by year, among the middle classes, a number 
of young people with minds instructed and enlarged 
as they never are now, when their schools are, both 
socially and intellectually, the most inadequate that 
fall to the lot of any middle class among the civilised 
nations of Europe. And the improvement so wrought 
must tell in the end, and will gradually fit the middle 
classes to understand better themselves and the 
world, and to take their proper place, and to grasp 
and treat real politics, — politics far other than their 
politics of Dissent, which seem to me quite played 
out. This will be a work of time. Do not suppose 
that a great change of this kind is to be effected off 
hand. But we may make a beginning for it at once. 



376 lEISH ESSAYS. [in. 

and a good beginning, by public schools for the 
middle classes. 

For twenty years I have been vainly urging this 
upon the middle classes themselves. Now I urge it 
upon you. Comprehend, that middle-class education 
is a great democratic reform, of the truest, surest, 
safest kind. Christianity itself was such a reform. 
The kingdom of God, the grand object of Jesus Christ, 
the grand object of Christianity, is mankind raised, 
as a whole, into harmony with the true and abiding 
law of man's being, living as we were meant to live. 
Those of old who had to forward this work found 
the Jewish community, — to whom they went first, — 
narrow, rigid, sectarian, unintelligent, of impracti- 
cable temper, their heads full of some impossible 
politics of their own. Then they looked around, and 
they saw an immense world outside the Jewish 
community, a world with a thousand faults, no 
doubt, but with openness and flexibility of mind, 
new and elastic, full of possibilities ; — and they said : 
We turn to the Gentiles! Do not be affronted at 
being compared to the Gentiles ; the Gentiles were 
the human race, the Gentiles were the future. 
Mankind are called in one body to the peace of 
God ; that is the Christian phrase for civilisa 
tion. We have by no means reached that con 
summation yet; but that, for eighteen centuries, 
we have been making way towards it, we owe to the 
Gentiles and to those who turned to them. The 
work, I say, is not nearly done yet ; and our Judaic 
and unelastic middle class in this country is of no 
present service, it seems, for carrying it forward. 
Do you, then, carry it forward yourselves, and insist 
on taking the middle class with you. You will be 
amply repaid for the effort, in your own fuller powers 
of life and joy, in any event. We may get in our 



III.] ECCE, CONVEETIMUR AD GENTES. 377 

time none of the great reforms which we have been 
talking about ; we may not even get public schools 
for the middle classes. But we are always the 
better, all of us, for having aimed high, for having 
striven to see and know things as they really are, for 
having set ourselves to walk in the light of that 
knowledge, to help forward great designs, and to do 
good. " Consider whereunto ye are born ! ye were 
not made to live like brutes, but to follow virtue and 
knowledge." 



IV. 

THE FUTUEE OE LIBEEALISM. 

A PUBLIC man, whose word was once of great power 
and is now too much forgotten by us, WilHam Cob- 
bett, had a humorous way of expressing his contempt 
for the two great political parties that between them 
govern our country, the Whigs and Tories, or Liberals 
and Conservatives, and who, as we all know, are 
fond of invoking their principles. Cobbett used to 
call these principles, contemptuously, the pinciples of 
Pratt, the piincij^les of Yorhe. Instead of taking, in 
the orthodox style, the divinised heroes of each party, 
and saying the imnciyles of Mr. Pitt, the principles of 
Mr. Fox, he took a Whig and a Tory Chancellor, Lord 
Camden and Lord Hardwicke, who were more of 
lawyers than of politicians, and upon them he fathered 
the principles of the two great parties in the State. 
It is as if a man were now to talk of Liberals and 
Conservatives adhering, not to the principles of Mr. 
Glodstone, the principles of Lord Beaconsfield, but to 
the principles of Poundell Palmer, the principles of 
Cairns. Eminent as are these personages, the effect 
of the profession of faith would be somewhat attenu- 
ated ; and this is just what Cobbett intended. He 
meant to throw scorn on both of the rival parties in 
the State, and on their profession of principles ; and 



IV.] THE FUTURE OF LIBERALISM. 379 

SO this great master of effect took a couple of lawyers, 
whose names lent themselves happily to his purpose, 
and called the principles contending for mastery in 
Parliament, the principles of Pratt, the pincvples of 
Yorhe ! 

Cobbett's politics were at bottom always governed 
by one master-thought, — the thought of the evil con- 
dition of the English labourer. He saw the two 
great parties in the State inattentive, as he thought, 
to that evil condition of the labourer, — inattentive to 
it, or ignorantly aggravating it by mismanagement. 
Hence his contempt for Whigs and Tories alike. 
And perhaps I may be allowed to compare myself 
with Cobbett so far as this: that whereas his politics 
were governed by a master-thought, the thought of 
the bad condition of the English labourer, so mine, 
too, are governed by a ma,ster- thought, but by a 
different one from Cobbett's. The master-thought by 
which my politics are governed is rather this, — the 
thought of the bad civilisation of the English middle 
class. But to this object of my concern I see the 
two great parties in the State as inattentive as, in 
Cobbett's regard, they were to the object of his. I 
see them inattentive to it, or ignorantly aggravating 
its ill state by mismanagement. And if one were of 
Cobbett's temper, one might be induced, perhaps, 
under the circumstances, to speak of our two great 
political parties as scornfully as he did ; and instead 
of speaking with reverence of the body of Liberal 
principles which recommend themselves by Mr. Glad- 
stone's name, or of the body of Conservative 
principles which recommend themselves by Lord 
Beaconsfield's, to call them gruffly the princvples of 
Pratt, the princijjles of Yorke. 

Cobbett's talent any one might well desire to 
have, but Cobbett's temper is far indeed from being 



380 THE FUTUEE OF LIBERALISM. [iv. 

a temper of mildness and sweet reason, and must be 
eschewed by whoever makes it his study ''to liberate/' 
as Plato bids us, " the gentler element in himself." 
And therefore I will most willingly consent to call 
the principles of the Liberal and Conservative parties 
by their regular and handsome title of the principles 
of Mr. Gladstone, the principles of Lord Beaconsfield, 
instead of disparagingly styling them the principles of 
Pratt, the principles of Yorke. Only, while conceding 
with all imaginable willingness to Liberals and Con- 
servatives the use of the handsomest title for their 
principles, I have never been able to see that these 
principles of theirs, at any rate as they succeed in 
exhibiting them, have quite the value or solidity 
which their professors themselves suppose. 

It is but the other day that I was remarking to 
confident Conservatives, at the very most prosperous 
hour of Conservative rule, how, underneath all ex- 
ternal appearances, the country was yet profoundly 
Liberal. And eight or ten years ago, long before 
their disaster of 1874 came, I kept assuring confident 
Liberals that the mind of the country was grown a 
little weary of their stock performances upon the 
political stage, and exhorting my young Liberal 
friends not to be for rushing impetuously upon this 
stage, but to keep aloof from it for a while, to culti- 
vate a disinterested play of mind upon the stock 
notions and habits of their party, and to endeavour 
to promote, with me, an inward working. Without 
attending to me in the least, they pushed on towards 
the arena of politics, not at that time very successfully. 
But they have, I own, been much more fortunate 
since ; and now they stand in the arena of politics, 
not quite so young as in those days when I last 
exhorted them, but full of vigour still, and in good 
numbers. Me they have left staying outside as of 



IV.] THE FUTURE OF LIBERALISM. 381 

old ; unconvinced, even yet, of the wisdom of their 
choice, a Liberal of the future rather than a Liberal 
of the present, disposed to think that by its actual 
present words and works the Liberal party, however 
prosperous it may seem, cannot really succeed, that 
its practice wants more of simple and sincere thought 
to direct it, and that our young friends are not taking 
the surest way to amend this state of things when 
they cast in their lot with it, but rather are likely to 
be carried away by the stream themselves. 

However, politicians we all of us here in England 
are and must be, and I too cannot help being a 
politician ; but a politician of that commonwealth of 
which the pattern, as the philosopher says, exists 
perhaps somewhere in heaven, but certainly is at 
present found nowhere on earth, — a Liberal, as I 
have said, of the future. Still, from time to time 
Liberals of the future cannot but be stirred up to 
look and see how their politics relate themselves to 
the Liberalism which now is, and to test by them 
the semblances and promises and endeavours of this, 
— especially at its moments of resurrection and cul- 
mination, — and to forecast what its fortunes are 
likely to be. And this one does for one's own sake 
first and foremost, and for the sake of the very few 
who may happen to be likeminded with oneself, to 
satisfy a natural and irresistible bent for seeing things 
as they really are, for not being made a dupe of, not 
being taken in. But partly, also, a Liberal of the 
future may do it for the sake of his young Liberal 
friends, who, though they have committed themselves 
to the stream of the Liberalism which now is, are 
yet aware, many of them, of a great need for finding 
the passage from this Liberalism to the Liberalism of 
the future. And, although the passage is not easy 
to find, yet some of them perhaps, as they are men 



382 THE PUTUKE OF LIBEKALISM. [iv. 

of admirable parts and energy, if only they see clearly 
the matters with which they have to deal, by a happy 
and divine inspiration may find it. 

Let me begin by making myself as pleasant as I 
can to our Liberal friends, and by conceding to them 
that their recent triumph over their adversaries was 
natural and salutary. They reproach me, sometimes, 
with having drawn the picture of the Eadical and 
Dissenting Bottles, but left the Tory Bottles unpor- 
trayed. Yet he exists, they urge, and is very baneful; 
and his ignoble Toryism it is, the shoddy Toryism of 
the City and of the Stock -Exchange, and not, as 
pompous leading articles say, the intelligence and 
sober judgment of the educated classes and of 
mercantile sagacity, which carried the elections in 
the City of London and in the metropolitan counties 
for the Conservatives. Profoundly congenial to this 
shoddy Toryism, — so my Liberal reprovers go on to 
declare, — were the fashions and policy of Lord 
Beaconsfield, a policy flashy, insincere, immoral, 
worshipping material success above everything ; pro- 
foundly congenial and profoundly demoralising. Now, 
I will not say that I adopt all these forcible and 
picturesque expressions of my Liberal friends, but I 
fully concede to them that although it is with the 
Eadical and Dissenting Bottles that I have occupied 
myself, for indeed he interests me far more than the 
other, — yet the Tory Bottles exists too, exists in 
great numbers and great force, particularly in London 
and its neighbourhood ; and that, for him. Lord 
Beaconsfield and Lord Beaconsfield's style of govern- 
ment were at once very attractive and very demoral- 
ising. This, however, is but a detail of a great 
question. In general, the mind of the country is, as 
I have already said, profoundly Liberal; and it is 
Liberal ^by a just instinct. It feels that the Tories 



rv.] THE FUTURE OF LIBEEALISM. 383 

have not the secret of life and of the future for 
us, and it is right in so thinking. It turns to the 
Tories from time to time, in dissatisfaction at the 
shortcomings of Liberal statesmanship ; but its 
reaction and recoil from them, after it has tried 
them for a little, is natural and salutary. For they 
cannot really profit the nation, or give it what it 
needs. 

Moreover, we will concede, likewise, that what 
seems to many people the most dubious part of the 
Liberal programme, what is blamed as revolutionary 
and a leap in the dark, what is deprecated even by 
some of the most intelligent of Liberal statesmen as 
unnecessary and dangerous, — the proposal to give a 
vote to the agricultural labourer, — we will concede 
that this, too, is a thing not to be lamented and 
blamed, but natural and salutary. Not that there is 
either any natural right in every man to the posses- 
sion of a vote, or any gift of wisdom and virtue 
conferred by such possession. But if experience has 
established any one thing in this world, it has estab- 
lished this : that it is well for any great class and 
description of men in society to be able to say for 
itself what it wants, and not to have other classes, 
the so-called educated and intelligent classes, acting 
for it as its proctors, and supposed to understand its 
wants and to provide for them. They do not really 
understand its wants, they do not really provide for 
them. A class of men may often itself not either 
fully understand its own wants, or adequately express 
them ; but it has a nearer interest and a more sure 
diligence in the matter than any of its proctors, and 
therefore a better chance of success. Let the agricul- 
tural labourer become articulate, let him speak for 
himself. In his present case we have the last left of 
our illusions, that one class is capable of properly 



384 THE FUTURE OF LIBERALISM. [iv. 

speaking for another, answering for another j and it 
is an illusion like the rest. 

All this we may be quite prepared to concede to 
the Liberalism which now is ; the fitness and natural- 
ness of the most disputed article in its programme, 
the fitness and naturalness of its adversaries' recent 
defeat. And yet, at the same time, what strikes one 
fully as much as all this, is the insecureness of the 
Liberals' hold upon office and upon public favour ; 
the probability of the return, perhaps even more than 
once, of their adversaries to office, before that final 
and happy consummation is reached, — the permanent 
establishment of Liberalism in power. 

Many people will tell us that this is because the 
multitude, by whose votes the elections are now 
decided, is ignorant and capricious and unstable, and 
gets tired of those who have been managing its aff'airs 
for some time, and likes a change to something new, 
and then gets tired of this also, and changes back 
again ; and that so we may expect to go on changing 
from a Conservative government to a Liberal, and 
from a Liberal government to a Conservative, back- 
wards and forwards for ever. But this is not so. 
Instinctively, however slowly, the human spirit 
struggles towards the light ; and the adoptions and 
rejections of its agents by the multitude are never 
wholly blind and capricious, but have a meaning. 
And the Liberals of the future are those who preserve 
themselves from distractions and keep their heads as 
clear and their tempers as calm as they can, in order 
that they may discern this meaning ; and therefore 
the Liberals of the present, who are too heated and 
busy to discern it, cannot do without them altogether, 
greatly as they are inclined to disregard them, but 
they have an interest in their cogitations whether 
they will or no. 



IV.] THE FUTURE OF LIBERALISM. 385 

What, then, is "the meaning of the veerings of 
public favour from one of the two great parties which 
administer our affairs to the other, and why is it 
likely that the gust of favour, by which the Liberals 
have recently benefited, will not be a steady and 
permanent wind to bear them for ever prosperously 
along ? Well, the reason of it is very simple, but the 
simple reason of a thing is often the very last that 
we will consent to look at. But as the end and aim 
of all dialectics is, as by the great master of dialectics 
we have been most truly told, to help us to an answer 
to the question, how to live ; so, beyond all doubt 
whatever, have politics too to deal with this same 
question and with the discovery of an answer to it. 
The true and noble science of politics is even the very 
chief of the sciences, because it deals with this question 
for the benefit of man not as an isolated creature, but 
in that state " without which," as Burke says, " man 
could not by any possibility arrive at the perfection 
of which his nature is capable," — for the benefit of 
man in society. Now of man in society the capital 
need is, that the whole body of society should come 
to live with a life worthy to be called human, and 
corresponding to man's true aspirations and powers. 
This, the humanisation of man in society, is civilisa- 
tion. The aim for all of us is to promote it, and to 
promote it is above all the aim for the true politician. 

Of these general propositions we none of us, prob- 
ably, deny or question the truth, although we do not 
much attend to them in our practice of politics, but 
are concerned with points of detail. Neither will any 
man, probably, be disposed to deny that, the aim for 
all of us, and for the politician more especially, being 
to make civilisation pervasive and general, the 
necessary means towards civilisation may be said to 
be, first and foremost, expansion ; and then, the power 

VOL. IV. 2 C 



386 



THE FUTURE OF LIBERALISM. 



[IV. 



of expansion being given, these other powers have to | 
follow it and to find their account in it : — the power " 
of conduct, the power of intellect and knowledge, the 
power of beauty, the power of social life and manners. 
These are the means towards our end, which is civilisa- 
tion; and the true politician, who wills the end, cannot ■] 
but will the means also. And meanwhile, whether " 
the. politician wills them or not, there is an instinct 
in society pushing it to desire them and to tend to 
them, and making it dissatisfied when nothing is 
done for them, or when impediment and harm are 
offered to them ; and this instinct we call the instinct 
of self-preservation in humanity. So long as any of 
the means to civilisation are neglected, or have im- 
pediment and harm offered to them, men are always, 
whether consciously or no, in want of something 
which they have not ; they can never be really at 
ease. At times they even get angrily dissatisfied 
with themselves, their condition, and their govern- 
ment, and seek restlessly for a change. 

Expansion we were bound to put first among the 
means towards civilisation, because it is the basis 
which man's whole effort to civilise himself requires 
and presupposes. The instinct for expansion mani- 
fests itself conspicuously in the love of liberty, and 
every one knows how signally this love is exhibited 
in England. Now, the Liberals are pre-eminently 
the party appealing to the love of liberty, and there- 
fore to the instinct for expansion. The Conservatives 
may say that they love liberty as much as the 
Liberals love it, and that for real liberty they do as 
much. But it is evident that they do not appeal so 
principally as the Liberals to the love of liberty, 
because their principal appeal is to the love of order, 
to the respect for what they call " our traditional, 
existing social arrangements." Order is a most ex- 



lY.] THE FUTUEE OF LIBERALISM. 387 

cellent thing, and true liberty is impossible without 
it ; but order is not in itself liberty, and an appeal 
to the love of order is not a direct appeal to the 
love of liberty, to the instinct for expansion. The 
great body of the community, therefore, in which 
the instinct for expansion works powerfully and 
spreads more and more, this great body feels that 
to its primary instinct, its instinct for expansion, the 
Liberals rather than the Conservatives make appeal. 
Consequently this great body tends, and must tend, 
to go with the Liberals. And this is what I meant 
by sapng, even at the time when the late Govern- 
ment seemed strongest, that the country was pro- 
foundly Liberal. The instinct for expansion was 
still, I meant to say, the primary instinct in the 
great body of our community ; and this instinct is in 
alliance with the Liberals, not with the Conservatives. 

To enlarge and secure our existence by the con- 
veniences of life is the object of trade ; and the 
development of trade, Hke that of liberty, is due 
to the working in men of the natural instinct of 
expansion. And the turn for trade our nation has 
shown as signally as the turn for liberty ; and of its 
instinct for expansion, in this line also, the Liberals, 
and not the Conservatives, have been the great 
favourers. The mass of the community, pushed by 
the instinct for expansion, sees in the Liberals the 
friends of trade as well as the friends of hberty. 

And, in fact, Liberal statesmen Hke the present 
Lord Derby (who well deserves, certainly, that among 
the Liberals, as he himself desires, we should count 
him), and Liberal orators like IVIr. Bright, are con- 
tinually appealing, when they address the public, 
either to the love of hberty or to the love of trade, 
and praising LiberaHsm for having favoured and 
helped the one or the other, and blaming Conser- 



388 THE FUTURE OF LIBERALISM. [iv. 

vatism for having discouraged and checked them. 
When they make these appeals, when they distribute 
this praise and this blame, they touch a chord in 
the public mind which vibrates strongly in answer. 
What the Liberals have done for liberty, what the 
Liberals have done for trade, and how under this 
beneficent impulsion the greatness of England has 
arisen, the greatness which comes, as the hearer is 
told, from "the cities you have built, the railroads 
you have made, the manufactures you have produced, 
the cargoes which freight the ships of the greatest 
mercantile navy the world has ever seen," — this, 
together with the virtues of Nonconformity and of 
Nonconformists, and the demerits of the Tories, may 
be said, as I have often remarked, to be the never- 
failing theme of Mr. Bright's speeches ; and his 
treatment of the theme is a never-failing source of 
excitement and delight to his hearers. And how 
skilfully and effectively did Lord Derby the other 
day, in a speech in the north of England, treat after 
his own fashion the same kind of theme, pitying 
the wretched Continent of Europe, given over to 
"emperors, grand dukes, archdukes, field -marshals, 
and tremendous personages of that sort," and ex- 
tolling Liberal England, free from such incubuses, and 
enabled by that freedom to get " its manufacturing 
industries developed," and to let "our characteristic 
qualities for industrial supremacy have play." Lord 
Derby here, like Mr. Bright, appeals to the instinct 
for expansion manifesting itself in our race by the 
love of liberty and the love of trade ; and to such a 
call, so effectively made, a popular audience in this 
country always responds. 

What a source of strength is this for the Liberals, 
and how surely and abundantly do they profit by it ! 
Still, it is not all-sufficient. For we have working 






t 



IV.] THE FUTURE OF LIBERALISM. 389 

in us, as elements towards civilisation, besides the 
instinct for expansion, the instinct also, as was just 
now said, for conduct, the instinct for intellect and 
knowledge, the instinct for beauty, the instinct for a 
fit and pleasing form of social life and manners. 
And Lord Derby will allow, I am sure, when he 
thinks of St. Helens and of similar places, that even 
at his own gate, and amongst a population developing 
its manufacturing industries most fully, free from 
emperors and archdukes, congratulated by him on its 
freedom, and trade, and industrial supremacy, and 
responding joyfully to his congratulations, there is 
to be found, indeed, much satisfaction to the instinct 
in man for expansion, but little satisfaction to his 
instinct for beauty, and to his instinct for a fit and 
pleasing form of social life and manners. I will not 
at this moment speak of conduct, or of intellect and 
knowledge, because I wish to carry Lord Derby un- 
hesitatingly with me in what I say. And certainly 
he will allow that the instinct of man for beauty, his 
instinct for fit and pleasing forms of social life and 
manners, is not well satisfied at St. Helens. Cobbett, 
whom I have already quoted, used to call places of 
this kind Hell-holes. St. Helens is eminently what 
Cobbett meant by a Hell-hole, but it is only a type, 
however eminent, of a whole series of places so 
designated by him, such as Bolton, Wigan, and the 
like, places developing abundantly their manufactur- 
ing industries, but in which man's instinct for beauty, 
and man's instinct for fit and pleasing forms of social 
life and manners, in which these two instincts, at any 
rate, to say nothing for the present of others, find 
little or no satisfaction. Such places certainly must 
be said to show, in the words of a very different 
personage from Cobbett, the words of the accom- 
plished President of the Royal Academy, Sir Frederick 



390 THE FUTUEE OF LIBERALISM. [iv. | 

Leighton, "no love of beauty, no sense of the out- 
ward dignity and comeliness of things calling on the 
part of the public for expression, and, as a corollary, ; 
no dignity, no comeliness, for the most part, in their i 
outward aspect." j 

And not only have the inhabitants of what 
Cobbett called a Hell -hole, and what Lord Derby ; 
and Mr. Bright would call a centre of manufacturing 
industry, no satisfaction of man's instinct for beauty 
to make them happy, but even their manufacturing 
industries they develop in such a manner, that from 
the exercise of this their instinct for expansion they 
do not procure the result which they expected, but 
they find uneasiness and stoppage. For in general 
they develop their industries in this wise : they 
produce, not something which it is very difficult to 
make, and of which people can never have enough, 
and which they themselves can make far better than 
anybody else; but they produce that which is not 
hard to make, and of which there may easily be 
produced more than is wanted, and which more and 
more people, in different quarters, fall to making, as 
times goes on, for themselves, and which they soon 
make quite as well as the others do. But at a given 
moment, when there is a demand, or a chance of 
demand, for their manufacture, the capitalists in the 
Hell-holes, as Cobbett would say, or the leaders of 
industrial enterprise, as Lord Derby and Mr. Bright 
would call them, set themselves to produce as much 
as ever they can, without asking themselves how long 
the demand may last, so that it do but last long 
enough for them, to make their own fortunes by it, or 
without thinking, in any way beyond this, about 
what they are doing, or troubling themselves any 
further with the future. And clusters and fresh 
clusters of men and women they collect at places like 



IV.] THE FUTUEE OF LIBERALISM. 391 

St. Helens and Bolton to manufacture for them, and 
call them into being there just as much as if they 
had begotten them. Then the demand ceases or 
slackens, because more has been produced than was 
wanted, or because people who used to come to us 
for the thing we produced take to producing it for 
themselves, and think that they can make it (and we 
have premised that it is a thing not difficult to make) 
quite as well as we can ; or even, since some of our 
heroes of industrial enterprise have been in too great 
haste to make their fortunes, and unscrupulous in 
their processes, better. And perhaps these capitalists 
have had time to make their fortunes ; but mean- 
while they have not made the fortunes of the clusters 
of men and women whom they have called into being 
to produce for them, and whom they have, as I said, 
as good as begotten. But these they leave to the 
chances of the future, and of the further development, 
as Lord Derby says, of great manufacturing industries. 
And so there arise periods of depression of trade, 
there arise complaints of over-production, uneasiness 
and distress at our centres of manufacturing industry. 
People then begin, even although their instinct for 
expansion, so far as liberty is concerned, may have 
received every satisfaction, they begin to discover, 
like those unionist workmen whose words Mr. John 
Morley quotes, that " free political institutions do not 
guarantee the well-being of the toiling class." 

But we need not go to visit the places which 
Cobbett called Hell -holes, or travel so far as St. 
Helens, close by Lord Derby's gate at Knowsley, or 
so far as Bolton or Wigan. We Londoners need not 
go away from the place where our own daily business 
lies, and from London itself, in order to see how 
insufficient for man is our way of gratifying his 
instinct for expansion and this instinct alone, and 



392 THE FUTURE OF LIBERALISM. [iv. 

what conies of trusting too much to what is thus | 
done for us. We have only to take the tramway at 
King's Cross, and to let ourselves be carried through 
Camden Town up the slopes towards Highgate and 
Hampstead, where from the upward-sloping ground, 
as we ascend, we have a good view all about us, and 
can survey much of human haunt and habitation. 
And in the pleasant season of the year, and in this m\ 
humid and verdure-nursing English climate, we shall * ' 
see plenty of flowering trees, and grass, and vegeta- 
tion of all kinds to delight our eyes ; but they will 
meet with nothing else to delight them. All that 
man has made there for his habitation and functions 
is singularly dull and mean, and does indeed, as we 
gradually mount the disfigured slopes and see it 
clearer and clearer, "reveal the spectacle," as Sir 
Frederick Leighton says, "of the whole current of 
human life setting resolutely in a direction opposed 
to artistic production ; no love of beauty, no sense jof 
the outward dignity of things, and, as a corollary, no 
dignity, no comeliness, for the most part, in their 
outward aspect." And here, in what we see from 
the tramway, we have a type, not of life at a centre 
of manufacturing industry, but of the life in general 
of the English middle class. "VVe have the life of a 
class which has been able to follow freely its instinct 
of expansion, so far as to preserve itself from 
emperors and archdukes and tremendous personages 
of that sort, and to enjoy abundance of political 
liberty and of trade. But man's instinct for beauty 
has been maltreated and starved, in this class, in the 
manner we see. And man's instinct, also, for 
intellect and knowledge has been maltreated and 
starved ; because the schools for this class, where it 
should have called forth and trained this instinct, are 
the worst of the kind anywhere. And the provision 



IV.] THE FUTURE OF LIBERALISM. 393 

made by this class for the instinct which desires fit 
and pleasing forms of social life and manners is what 
might be expected from its provision for the instinct 
of beauty, and for the instinct leading us to intellect 
and knowledge. 

But there this class lives, busy and confident ; and 
enjoys the amplest political liberty, and takes what 
Mr. Bright calls " a commendable interest in politics," 
and reads, what he says is such admirable reading 
for all of us, the newspapers. And thus there arises 
a type of life and opinion which that acute and 
powerful personage. Prince Bismarck, has described 
so excellently, that I cannot do better than use his 
words. "When great numbers of people of this 
sort," says Prince Bismarck, "live close together, 
individualities naturally fade out and melt into each 
other. All sorts of opinions grow out of the air, 
from hearsays and talk behind people's backs ; 
opinions with little or no foundation in fact, but 
which get spread abroad through newspapers, popu- 
lar meetings, and talk, and get themselves established 
and are ineradicable. People talk themselves into 
believing the thing that is not ; consider it a duty 
and obligation to adhere to their belief, and excite 
themselves about prejudices and absurdities." Who 
does not recognise the truth of this account of 'puUic 
opinion, — public opinion in politics, public opinion in 
religion, — as it forms itself amongst such a descrip- 
tion of people as the people through whose seats of 
habitation the tramway northward from King's Cross 
takes us ; nay, as it forms itself amongst the English 
middle class in general, amongst the great community 
which we call that of the Philistines 1 

Now, this great Philistine community it is, with 
its liberty and its publicity, and its trade, and its 
love of all the three, but with its narrow range of 



394 THE FUTURE OF LIBERALISM. [iv. 

intellect and knowledge, its stunted sense of beauty 
and dignity, its low standard of social life and 
manners, and its ignorance of its own deficiencies in 
respect of all these, — this Philistine middle class it 
is, to which a Liberal government has especially to 
make appeal, and on which it relies for support. 
And where such a government deals with foreign 
affairs, and addresses foreign nations, this is the force 
which it is known to have behind it, and to be forced 
to reckon with ; this class trained as we have seen, 
and with habits of thought and opinion formed as 
Prince Bismarck describes. It is this Englishman of 
the middle class, this Philistine with his likes and 
dislikes, his effusion and confusion, his hot fits and 
cold fits, his want of dignity and of the steadfastness 
which comes from dignity, his want of ideas, and of 
the steadfastness which comes from ideas, on whom 
a Liberal Foreign Minister must lean for support, and 
whose dispositions he must in great measure follow. 
Mr. Grant Duff and others are fond of sketching out 
a line of foreign policy which they say is the line of 
Liberal foreign policj^, or of insisting on the dignity 
and ability of this or that Liberal statesman, such as 
Lord Granville, who may happen to hold the post of 
Foreign Minister. No one will wish to deny the 
dignity and ability of Lord Granville ; and no one 
doubts that Mr. Grant Duff and his intelligent friends 
can easily draw out a striking and able line of foreign 
policy, and may call it the line of Liberal foreign 
policy if they please. But the real Liberal Foreign 
Minister and the real Liberal foreign policy are not 
to be looked for in Lord Granville left to himself, or 
in a programme drawn up in Mr. Grant Duff's 
library by himself and his intelligent friends ; they 
receive a bias from the temper and thoughts, and 
from the hot fits and cold fits, of that middle class on 



IV.] THE FUTUEE OF LIBEEALISM. 395 

which a Liberal government leans for support. And 
so we get such mortifications as those which befell us 
in the case of Prussia's dealing with Denmark and of 
Kussia's dealing with the Black Sea; and foreign 
statesmen, knowing how the matter stands with us, 
say coolly what Dr. Busch reports Prince Bismarck to 
have said concerning a firm and dignified declaration 
by our Liberal Foreign Secretary : " What does it 
matter ? Nothing is to be feared, as nothing is to 
be hoped, from these people." 

Thus it happens that we suffer " a loss of prestige," 
as it is called ; and we become aware of it, and then 
we are vexed and dissatisfied. Just as by following, 
as we do, our instinct for expansion, and by procuring 
the amplest political liberty and free trade, and by 
preserving ourselves from such tremendous personages 
as emperors, grand dukes, and .archdukes, we yet do 
not preserve ourselves from depression of trade, so 
neither do we by all these advantages preserve our- 
selves from loss of prestige. And at this from time 
to time the public mind, as we all know, gets vexed 
and dissatisfied. 

And other occasions of dissatisfaction, too, there 
may easily be, and at one or other of them there 
may be a veering round to the Tories, to see if they, 
perhaps, can do us any good. Now, we must re- 
member in what case the great body of our community 
is, when it thus turns to the Tories in the hope of better- 
ing itself. It has so far followed its instinct for 
expansion, to which Liberal statesmen make special 
appeal, as to obtain full political liberty and free 
trade. How far it has followed its instinct for con- 
duct I will not now enquire ; the enquiry might lead 
us into a discussion of the whole condition of morals 
and religion in this nation. However, we may 
certainly say, I think, that in no country has the 



396 THE FUTURE OF LIBERALISM. [iv. 

instinct for conduct been more followed than in our 
country, in few countries has it been followed so 
much. But the need of man for intellect and know- 
ledge has not in the great body of our community 
been much attended to, nor have Liberal statesmen 
made much appeal to it. For giving the rudiments 
and instruments of knowledge to the lowest class 
amongst us they have, indeed, sought of late to make 
provision, but for the advancement of intellect and 
knowledge among the middle classes they have made 
little or none. The need of man for beauty, again, 
has been by the great body of our community scarcely 
at all heeded, neither have Liberal statesmen sought 
to appeal to it. Of the need of man for fit and 
pleasing forms of social life and manners we may say 
the same. 

In this position are things, when from time to 
time the great body of our community turns to the 
Conservatives, or, as they are now beginning to be 
called again, the Tories, in the hope of bettering 
itself. Now, the need of man for expansion we are 
all agreed that Liberal statesmen, and not Tory 
statesmen, make appeal to, and that the great body 
of the community feels this need powerfully. But 
the other needs which it feels so little, and to which 
Liberal statesmen so little make appeal, are yet 
working obscurely in the community all the time, 
and craving for some notice and help, and begetting 
dissatisfaction with the sort of life which is the lot 
of man when they are utterly neglected. 

So to the Tories, in some such moment of dissatis- 
faction, the community turns. Now, to the need in 
man for conduct we will not say that Tory statesmen 
make much appeal, for the upper class, to which they 
belong, is now, we know, in great measure materi- 
alised ; and probably Mr. Jowett, who, though he is 



IV.] THE FUTURE OF LIBERALISM. 397 

a man of integrity and a most honest translator, has 
yet his strokes of malice, had this in his mind, where 
he brings in his philosopher saying that " the young 
men of the governing class are as indifferent as the 
pauper to the cultivation of virtue." Yet so far as 
dignity is a part of conduct, an aristocratic class, 
trained to be sensitive on the point of honour, and 
to think much of the grandeur and dignity of their 
country, do appeal to the instinct in man for conduct; 
but perhaps dignity may more conveniently be con- 
sidered here as a part of beauty than as a part of 
conduct. Therefore to the need for beauty, starved 
by those who, — following the hot and cold fits of 
the opinion of a middle class testy, ignorant, a little 
ignoble, unapt to perceive when it is making itself 
ridiculous, — may have brought about for our country 
a loss of prestige^ as it is called, and of the respect of 
foreign nations, to this need Tory statesmen, leaning 
upon the opinion of an aristocratic class by nature 
more firm, reticent, dignified, sensitive on the point 
of honour, do, I think, give some satisfaction. And 
the aristocratic class, of which they are the agents, 
give some satisfaction, moreover, to this bafiied and 
starved instinct for beauty, by the spectacle of a 
splendour, and grace, and elegance of life, due to 
inherited wealth and to traditional refinement; and to 
the instinct for fit and seemly forms of social inter- 
course and manners they give some satisfaction too. 

To the instinct for intellect and knowledge, how- 
ever, the aristocratic class and its agents, the Tory 
statesmen, give no satisfaction at all. To large and 
clear ideas of the future and of its requirements, 
whether at home or abroad, aristocracies are by 
nature inaccessible ; and though the firmness and 
dignity of their carriage, in foreign affairs, may 
inspire respect and give satisfaction, yet even here, 



398 THE FUTURE OF LIBERALISM. [iv. 

as they do not see how the world is really going, 
they can found nothing. By the possession of what 
is beautiful in outward life, and of what is seemly 
in manners, they do, as we have seen, attract ; but 
for the active communication and propagation, all 
through the community, of what is beautiful in out- 
ward life, and of what is seemly in manners, they 
do next to nothing. And, finally, to the instinct in 
the great body of the community for expansion they 
are justly felt to be even adverse, in so far as the very 
first consideration with them as a class, — a few humane 
individuals amongst them, lovers of perfection, being 
left out of account, — is always " the maintenance of 
our traditional, existing social arrangements." 

Consequently, however public favour may have 
veered round to them for a time, it soon appears 
that they cannot satisfy the needs of the community, 
and the turn of the Liberal statesmen comes again. 
Such a turn came to them not long ago. And the 
danger is, that the Liberal statesmen should again 
do only what it is easy and natural to them to do, 
because they have done it so often and so successfully 
already, — appeal vigorously to the love of political 
liberty and to the love of trade, and lean mainly 
upon the opinion of the middle class, as this class now 
is, and do nothing to make it sounder and better by 
appealing to the sense, in the body of the community, 
for intellect and knowledge, and striving to call it 
forth, and by appealing to the sense for beauty and to 
the sense for manners; and by appealing, moreover, to 
the sense for expansion more wisely and fruitfully than 
they do now. But if they do nothing of this kind, 
and simply return to their old courses, then there 
will inevitably be, after a while, pressure and stoppage 
and reproaches and dissatisfaction, and the turn of 
the Tories will come round again. Who knows 1 — 



IV.] THE FUTUEE OF LIBERALISM. 399 

some day, perhaps, even the Liberal panacea of sheer 
political liberty may be for a time discredited, and 
the fears of " Yerax " about personal government 
may come true, and the last scene in the wonderful 
career of Lord Beaconsfield may be that we shall see 
him, in a field-marshal's uniform, entering the House 
of Commons, and pointing to the mace, and com- 
manding Lord Rowton, in an octogenarian voice, to 
"take away that bauble." But still the rule of the 
Tories, even after such a masterstroke as that, will 
never last in our community j such strangers are the 
Tory statesmen to the secret of our community's life, 
to the secret of the future. 

Only let Liberal statesmen, at their returns to 
power, instead of losing themselves in the petty 
bustle and schemes of the moment, bethink them- 
selves what that aim of the community's life really 
is, and that secret of the life of the future : that it 
is civilisation, and civilisation made pervasive and 
general. Hitherto our Liberal statesmen themselves 
have conceived that aim very imperfectly, and very 
imperfectly worked for it, and this although they 
are called the leaders of progress. Hence the in- 
stability of their government, and the veerings round 
of public favour, now and again, to their adversaries. 
I have said that with one gTeat element of civilisation, 
the instinct in the community for expansion. Liberal 
statesmen are in alliance, and that their strength is 
due to that cause. Of the instinct for conduct I 
have said that we will not here speak ; it might lead 
us too far, and into the midst of matters of which 
I have spoken enough formerly, and of which I wish, 
as far as possible, to renounce the discussion. But 
for the other means of civilisation Liberal statesmen 
really do little or nothing : and this explains their 
instability. Let us not cover up their shortcomings, 



400 THE FUTUEE OF LIBEEALISM. [iv. 

but rather draw them into light. For the need of 
intellect and knowledge what do they do 1 They 
will point to elementary education. But elementary 
education goes so little way, that in giving it one 
hardly does more than satisfy man's instinct for 
expansion, one scarcely satisfies his need of intellect 
and knowledge at all; anymore than the achieve- 
ment of primitive man in providing, himself with 
his simple working tools is a satisfying of the human 
need for intellect and knowledge. For the need of 
beauty Liberal statesmen do nothing, for the need of 
manners nothing. And they lean especially upon 
the opinion of one great class, — -the middle class, — 
with virtues of its own, indeed, but at the same time 
full of narrowness, full of prejudices ; with a defec- 
tive type of religion, a narrow range of intellect and 
knowledge, a stunted sense of beauty, a low standard 
of manners ; and averse, moreover, to whatever may 
disturb it in its vulgarity. How can such statesmen 
be said, any more than the Tories, to grasp that 
idea of civilisation which is the secret of the life of 
our community and of the life of the future 1 — to 
grasp the idea fully, and with potent effect to work 
for it 1 

We who now talk of these things shall be in our 
graves long before Liberal statesmen can have entirely 
mended their ways, and set themselves steadily to 
bring about the reign of a civilisation pervasive and 
general. But a beginning towards it they may make 
even now, and perhaps they are making it. Perhaps 
Liberal statesmen are . beginning to see what they 
have lost by following too submissively middle -class 
opinion hitherto, our middle class being such as it 
is now j and they may be resolving to avoid for the 
future this cause of mischief to them. Perhaps 
Lord Granville is bent on planning and maintaining 



II 



IV.] THE FUTURE OF LIBERALISM. 401 

a line of foreign policy, such as a man of his means 
of information and of his insight and high feeling 
can well devise, and such as Mr. Grant Duff is 
always telling us that the real line of Liberal foreign 
policy is ; perhaps Lord Granville is even now ready 
with a policy of this sort, and resolved to adhere to 
it whatever may be in the meanwhile the hot fits 
and the cold fits, the effusion and confusion, of the 
British Philistine of the middle class. Perhaps 
Liberal statesmen have made up their minds no 
longer to govern Ireland in deference to the narrow 
prejudices and antipathies of this class. And perhaps, 
as time goes on, they will even turn resolutely round 
and look their middle-class friends full in the face, 
and tell them of their imperfections, and try to cure 
them. 

And then Lord Derby, when he speaks at St. 
Helen's or at some other place like it, will not extol 
his hearers as "an intelligent, keen-witted, critical, 
and well-to-do population such as our northern 
towns in England show," but he will point out to 
them that they have a defective type of religion, a 
narrow range of intellect and knowledge, a stunted 
sense of beauty, a low standard of manners ; and 
that they prove it by having made St. Helens, and 
by the life which they lead there ; and that they 
ought to do better. And Mr. Bright, instead of 
telling his Islington Nonconformists "how much of 
what there is free and good and great in England, 
and constantly growing in what is good, is owing to 
Nonconformist action," will rather admonish them 
that the Puritan type of life exhibits a religion not 
true, the claims of intellect and knowledge not satis- 
fied, the claim of beauty not satisfied, the claim of 
manners not satisfied ; and that if, as he says, the 
lower classes in this country have utterly abandoned 

VOL. IV. 2 D 



402 THE FUTUEE OF LIBEEALISM. [iv. 

the dogmas of Christianity, and the upper classes its 
practice, the cause lies very much in the impossible 
and unlovely presentment of Christian dogmas and 
practice which is offered by the most important part 
of this nation, the serious middle class, and above all 
by its Nonconforming portion. And, since the fail- 
ure here in civilisation comes not from an insufficient 
care for political liberty and for trade, nor yet from 
an insufficient care for conduct, but from an in- 
sufficient care for intellect and knowledge and beauty 
and a humane life, let Liberal statesmen despise and 
neglect for the cure of our present imperfection no 
means, whether of public schools, now wanting, or of 
the theatre, now left to itself and to chance, or of 
anything else which may powerfully conduce to the 
communication and propagation of real intelligence, 
and of real beauty, and of a life really humane. 

Objects which Liberal statesmen pursue now, and 
which are not in themselves ends of civilisation, they 
may possibly have to pursue still ; but let them 
pursue them in a different spirit. For instance, 
there are those well-known Liberal objects, that of 
legalising marriage with a deceased wife's sister, that 
of permitting Dissenters to use what burial-services 
they like in the parish churchyard, and that of 
granting what is termed Local Option. Every one 
of these objects may be attained, and it may even be 
necessary to attain them, and yet, after they are 
attained, the imperfections of our civilisation will 
stand just as they did before, and the real work of 
Liberal statesmen will have yet to begin. 

Some Liberals misconceive the character of these 
objects strangely. Mr. Bright urges Parliament to 
pass the Bill legalising marriage with a deceased 
wife's sister, in order that Parliament may " affirm by 
an emphatic vote the principle of personal liberty 



IV.] THE FUTURE OF LIBERALISM. 403 

for the men and women of this country in the chief 
concern of their lives." Bat the whole institution 
and sacredness of marriage is an abridgment of 
the principle of personal liberty in the concern 
in question. When Herod the tetrarch wanted to 
marry Herodias, his brother Philip's wife, he was 
seeking to affirm emphatically the principle of 
personal liberty in the concern of his marriage ; and 
we all know him to have been doing wrong. Every 
limitation of choice in marriage is an abridgment of 
the principle of personal liberty ; but there needs 
more delicacy of perception, more civilisation, to 
understand and accept the abridgment in some cases 
than in others. Very many in the lower class in this 
country, and many in the middle class, — the civilisa- 
tion and the capacity for delicate perception in these 
classes being what they are, — fail to understand and 
accept the prohibition to marry their deceased wife's 
sister. That they ought not to marry their brother's 
wife they can perceive ; that they ought not to marry 
their wife's sister they cannot. And so they contract 
these marriages freely, and the evil of their freely 
committing a breach of the law may be more than 
the good of imposing on them a restriction, which in 
their present state they have not perception enough 
to understand and obey. Therefore it may be 
expedient to legalise, amongst our people, marriage 
with a deceased wife's sister. Still, our civilisation, 
which it is the end of the true and noble science of 
politics to perfect, gains thereby hardly anything; 
and of its continued imperfection, indeed, the very 
call for the Bill in question is a proof. 

So, again, with measures like that for granting 
Local Option, as it is called, for doing away the 
addiction of our lower class to their porter and their 
gin. It is necessary to do away their addiction to 



404 THE FUTURE OF LIBERALISM. [iv. 

these ; and, for that end, to receive at the hands of 
the friends of temperance some such measure as the 
Bill for granting Local Option. Yet the ahmentary 
secret of the life of civilised man is by no means 
possessed by the friends of temperance as we now see 
them either here or in America ; and whoever has 
been amongst the population of the M6doc district, in 
France, will surely feel, if he is not a fanatic, that 
the civilised man of the future is more likely to 
adopt their beverage than to eat and drink like Dr. 
Eichardson. 

And so too, again, with the Burials Bill. It is a 
Bill for enabling the Dissenters to use their own 
burial services in the parish churchyard. Now, we 
all know what the services of many of the Protestant 
Dissenters are ; and that whereas the burial-service 
of the Church of England may be compared, as I 
have said somewhere or other, to a reading from 
Milton, so a burial-service, such as pleases many of 
the Protestant Dissenters, may be likened to a reading 
from Eliza Cook. But fractious clergymen could 
refuse, as is well known, to give their reading from 
Milton, or any reading at all, over the children of 
Baptists ; and the remedy for this was to abolish the 
rubric giving them the power of such refusal. The 
clergy, however, as if to prove the truth of Clarendon's 
sentence on them, a sentence which should be written 
up over the portal of the Lower House of Convoca- 
tion : " Clergymen, who understand the least, and take 
the worst measure of human affairs, of all mankind that 
can write and read/'' — the clergy, it seems, had rather 
the world should go to pieces than that this rubric 
should be abolished. And so Liberal statesmen 
must pass the Burials Bill ; — for it is better even to 
have readings from Eliza Cook in the parish church- 
yard than to have fractious clergymen armed with 



IV.] THE FUTURE OF LIBERALISM. 405 

the power of refusing to bury the children of Baptists. 
Still, our civilisation is not really advanced by any 
such measure as the Burials Bill ; nay, in so far as 
readings from Eliza Cook are encouraged to produce 
themselves in public, and to pass themselves off as 
equivalent to readings from Milton, it is retarded. 

Therefore do not let Liberal statesmen estimate 
the so-called Liberal measures, many of them, which 
they may be called upon to recommend now, at more 
than they are worth, or suppose that by recommend- 
ing them they at all remedy their shortcomings in 
the past ; — shortcomings which, consist in their having 
taken an incomplete view of the life of the community 
and of its needs, and in having done little or nothing 
for the need of intellect and knowledge, and for the 
need of beauty, and for the need of manners, but 
having thought it enough to work for political liberty 
and free trade, for the need of expansion. 

Nay, but even for the need of expansion our 
Liberal statesmen have not worked adequately. 
Doubtless the need of expansion in men suffers a 
defeat when they are over -tutored, over -governed, 
sat upon, as we say, by authority military or civil. 
From such a defeat of our instinct for expansion, 
political liberty saves us Englishmen ; and Liberal 
statesmen have worked for political liberty. But 
the need of expansion suffers a defeat, also, wherever 
there is an immense inequality of conditions and 
property ; such inequality inevitably depresses and 
degrades the inferior masses. And whenever any 
great need of human nature suffers defeat, then the 
nation in which the defeat happens finds difficulties 
befalling it from that cause ; nay, and the victories 
of other great needs do not compensate for the defeat 
of one. Germany, where the need for intellect and 
science is well cared for, where the sense of conduct 



406 THE FUTURE OF LIBERALISM. [iv. 

is strong, has neither liberty nor equality ; the in- 
stinct for expansion suffers there signal defeat. 
Hence the difficulties of Germany. France has 
liberty and equality, the instinct for expansion is 
victorious there ; but how greatly does the need for 
conduct suffer defeat ! and hence the difficulties of 
France. We English people have, deep and strong, 
the sense of conduct, and we have half of the instinct 
for expansion fully satisfied ; — that is to say, we have 
admirable political liberty, and we have free trade. 
But we have inequality rampant, and hence arise 
many of our difficulties. 

For in honest truth our present state, as I have 
elsewhere said, may without any great injustice be 
summed up thus : that we have an upper class 
materialised, a middle class vulgarised, a lower class 
brutalised. And this we owe to our inequality. 
For, if Lord Derby would think of it, he is himself 
at Knowsley quite as tremendous a personage, over 
against St. Helens, as the emperors and grand dukes 
and archdukes who fill him with horror. And 
though -he himself may be one of the humane few 
who emerge in all classes, and may have escaped 
being materialised, yet still, owing to his tremendous- 
ness, the middle class of St. Helens is thrown in upon 
itself, and not civilised ; and the lower class, again, 
is thrown in upon itself, and not civilised. And 
some who fill the place which he now fills are certain 
to be, some of them, materialised ; — like his great- 
grandfather, for instance, whose cock-fights, as it is 
said, are still remembered with gratitude and love 
by old men in Preston. And he himself, being so 
able and acute as he is, would never, if he were not 
in a false position and compelled by it to use unreal 
language, he would never talk so much to his hearers, 
in the towns of the north, about their being " an 



IV.] THE FUTUKE OF LIBERALISM. 407 

intelligent, keen-witted, critical, and well-to-do popu- 
lation ; " but he would reproach them, though kindly 
and mildly, for having made St. Helens and places 
like it, and he would exhort them to civilise them- 
selves. 

But of inequality, as a defeat to the instinct in 
the community for expansion, and as a sure cause of 
trouble, Liberal statesmen are very shy to speak. 
And in Ireland, where inequality and the system of 
great estates produces, owing to differences of religion, 
and to absenteeism, and to the ways of personages 
such as the late Lord Leitrim, even more tremendous, 
perhaps, than an emperor or an archduke, and to the 
whole history of the country and character of the 
people, — in Ireland, I say, where inequality produces, 
owing to all these, more pressing and evident troubles 
than in England, and is the second cause of our 
difficulties with the Irish, as the habit of governing 
them in deference to British middle-class prejudices 
is the first, — in Ireland Liberal statesmen never look 
the thing fairly in the face, or apply a real remedy, 
but invent palliatives like the Irish Land Act, which 
do not go to the root of the evil, but which unsettle 
men's notions as to the constitutive characters of 
property, making these characters something quite 
diff'erent in one place from what they are in another. 
And in England, where inequality and the system of 
great estates produces trouble too, though not trouble 
so glaring as in Ireland, in England Liberal states- 
men shrink even more from looking the thing in the 
face, and apply little palliatives ; and even for these 
little palliatives they allege reasons which are 
extremely questionable, such as that each child has 
a natural right to his equal share of his father's 
property, or that land in the hands of many owners 
will certainly produce more than in the hands of few. 



408 THE FUTUEE OF LIBEKALISM. [iv. 

And the true and simple reason against inequality 
they avert their ejes from, as if it were a Medusa ; 
— the reason, namely, that inequality, in a society 
like ours, sooner or later inevitably materialises the 
upper class, vulgarises the middle class, brutalises the 
lower class. 

Not until this need to which they appeal, the 
need in man for expansion, is better understood by 
Liberal statesmen, is understood to include equality 
as well as political liberty and free trade, — and is 
cared for by them, yet cared for not singly and ex- 
orbitantly, but in union and proportion with the 
progTess of man in conduct, and his growth in in- 
tellect and knowledge, and his nearer approach to 
beauty and manners, — will Liberal governments be 
secure. But when Liberal statesmen have learned to 
care for all these together, and to go on unto perfec- 
tion or true civilisation, then at last they will be 
professing and practising the true and noble science 
of politics and the true and noble science of economics, 
instead of, as now, semblances only of these sciences, 
or at best fragments of them. And then will come 
at last the extinction or the conversion of the Tories, 
the restitution of all things, the reign of the Liberal 
saints. But meanwhile, so long as the Liberals do 
only as they have done hitherto, they will not per- 
manently satisfy the community ; but the Tories will 
again, from time to time, be tried, — tried and found 
wanting. And we, who study to be quiet, and to 
keep our temper and our tongue under control, shall 
continue to speak of the principles of our two great 
political parties much as we do now; while clear- 
headed, but rough, impatient, and angry men, hke 
Cobbett, will call them the principles of Pratt, the 
pri'iiciples of Ym'ke. 



V. 

A SPEECH AT ETON.i 

The philosopher Epictetus, who had a school at 
Nicopolis in Epirus at the end of the first century of 
our era, thus apostrophises a young gentleman whom 
he supposes to be applying to him for education : — 

" Young sir, at home you have been at fisticuffs 
w^ith the man-servant, you have turned the house 
upside down, you have been a nuisance to the neigh- 
bours; and do you come here with the composed 
face of a sage, and mean to sit in judgment upon the 
lesson, and to criticise my want of point 1 You have 
come in here with envy and chagrin in your heart, 
humiliated at not getting your allowance paid you 
from home ; and you sit with your mind full, in the 
intervals of the lecture, of how your father behaves 
to you, and how your brother. What are the people 
down at home saying about me? — They are thinking: 
Now he is getting on ! they are saying : He will 
come home a walking dictionary! — Yes, and I should 
like to go home a walking dictionary; but then there 
is a deal of work required, and nobody sends me any- 
thing, and the bathing here at Nicopolis is dirty and 
nasty ; things are all bad at home, and all bad here." 

Nobody can say that the bathing at Eton is dirty 
1 Addi'ess delivered to the Eton Literary Society. 



410 A SPEECH AT ETON. {v. 

and nasty. But at Eton, as at Nicopolis, the moral 
disposition in which the pupil arrives at school, the 
thoughts and habits which he brings with him from 
home and from the social order in which he moves, 
must necessarily affect his power of profiting by what 
his schoolmasters have to teach him. This necessity 
is common to all schooling. You cannot escape from 
it here any more than they could at Nicopolis. 
Epictetus, however, was fully persuaded that what 
he had to teach was valuable, if the mental and 
moral frame of his pupils were but healthy enough 
to permit them to profit by it. I hope the Eton 
masters have the same conviction as to the native 
value of what they teach. But you know how many 
doubters and deniers of the value of a classical 
education we nowadays meet with. Let us put aside 
all that is said of the idleness, extravagance, and 
self-indulgence of the schoolboy. This may pair off 
with the complaint of Epictetus about the unsatis- 
factory moral state of his pupil. But with us there 
are many people who go on and say: "And when 
the schoolboy, in our public schools, does learn, he 
learns nothing that is worth knowing." 

It is not of the Eton schoolboy only that this is 
said, but of the public schoolboy generally. We are 
all in the same boat, — all of us in whose schooling 
the Greek and Latin classics fill the principal place. 
And it avails nothing, that you try and appease the 
gainsayer by now acquainting yourselves with the 
diameter of the sun and moon, and with all sorts of 
matters which to us of an earlier and ruder generation 
were unknown. So long' as the Greek and Latin 
classics continue to fill, as they do fill, the chief place 
in your school-work, the gainsayer is implacable and 
sticks to his sentence : " When the boy does learn, 
he learns nothing that is worth knowing." 



v.] A SPEECH AT ETON. 411 

Amidst all this disparagement, one may well ask 
oneself anxiously what is really to be said on behalf 
of studies over which so much of our time is spent, 
and for which we have, many of us, contracted a 
fondness. And after much consideration I have 
arrived at certain conclusions, which for my own use 
I find sufficient, but which are of such extreme 
simplicity that one ought to hesitate, perhaps, before 
one produces them to other people. However, such 
as they are, I have been led to bring them out more 
than once, and I will very briefly rehearse them now. 
It seems to me, firstly, that what a man seeks through 
his education is to get to know himself and the world ; 
next, that for this knowledge it is before all things 
necessary that he acquaint himself with the best 
which has been thought and said in the world ; 
finally, that of this best the classics of Greece and 
Rome form a very chief portion, and the portion 
most entirely satisfactory. With these conclusions 
lodged safe in one's mind, one is staunch on the side 
of the humanities. 

And in the same spirit of simplicity in which 
these conclusions have been reached, I proceed 
farther. People complain that the significance of 
the classics which we read at school is not enough 
brought out, that the whole order and sense of that 
world from which they issue is not seized and held 
up to view. Well, but the best, in literature, has 
the quality of being in itself formative, — silently 
formative ; of bringing out its own significance as we 
read it. It is better to read a masterpiece much, 
even if one does that only, than to read it a little, 
and to be told a great deal about its significance, and 
about the development and sense of the world from 
which it issues. Sometimes what one is told about 
the significance of a work, and about the development 



412 A SPEECH AT ETON. [v. 

of a world, is extremely questionable. At any rate, 
a schoolboy, who, as they did in the times of ignorance 
at Eton, read his Homer and Horace through, and 
then read them through again, and so went on until 
he knew them by heart, is not, in my opinion, so 
very much to be pitied. 

Still that sounding phrase, " the order and sense 
of a world," sends a kind of thrill through us when 
we hear it, especially when the world spoken of is a 
thing so great and so interesting as the Grseco-Roman 
world of antiquity. If we are not deluded by it into 
thinking that to read fine talk about our classical 
documents is as good as to read the documents 
themselves, the phrase is one which we may with 
advantage lay to heart. I remember being struck, 
long ago, with a remark on the Greek poet Theognis 
by Goethe, who did not know Greek well and had 
to pick out its meaning by the help of a Latin trans- 
lation, but who brought to everything which he read 
his powerful habits of thought and criticism. "When 
I first read Theognis," says Goethe, in substance, 
*'I thought him querulous and morbid, and disliked 
him. But when I came to know how entirely his 
poetry proceeded from the real circumstances of his 
life, from the situation of parties in Megara, his 
native city, and from the efi'ects of that situation 
upon himself and his friends, then I read him with 
quite another feeling." How very little do any of 
us treat the poetry of Theognis and other ancients in 
that fashion ! was my thought after reading Goethe's 
criticism. And earlier still I remember being struck 
at hearing a schoolfellow, who had left the sixth 
form at Rugby for Cambridge, and who had fallen in 
somewhere with one of Bun sen's sons, who is now a 
member of the German Parliament, — at hearing this 
schoolfellow contrast the training of George Bunseu, 



v.] A SPEECH AT ETON. 413 

as we then called him, with our own. Perhaps you 
think that at Rugby, which is often spoken of, though 
quite erroneously, as a sort of opposition establishment 
to Eton, we treated the classics in a high philosophical 
way, and traced the sequence of things in ancient 
literature, when you at Eton professed nothing of 
the kind. But hear the criticism of my old school- 
fellow. "It is wonderful," said he ; "not only can 
George Bunsen construe his Herodotus, but he has a 
view of the place of Herodotus in literary history, a 
thing none of us ever thought about." My friend 
spoke the truth ; but even then, as I listened to him, 
I felt an emotion at hearing of the place of Herodotus 
in literary history. Yes, not only to be able to read 
the admirable works of classical literature, but to 
conceive also that Grseco-Roman world, which is so 
mighty a factor in our own world, our own life, to 
conceive it as a whole of which we can trace the 
sequence, and the sense, and the connection with 
ourselves, this does undoubtedly also belong to a 
classical education, rightly understood. 

But even here, too, a plain person can proceed, if 
he likes, with great simplicity. As Goethe says of 
life : Strike into it anywhere, lay hold of it anywhere, 
it is always powerful and interesting, — so one may 
almost say of classical literature. Strike into it 
where you like, lay hold of it where you like, you 
can nearly always find a thread which will lead you, 
if you follow it, to large and instructive results. Let 
us to-night follow a single Greek word in this fashion, 
and try to compensate ourselves, however imperfectly, 
for having to divert our thoughts, just for one 
evening's lecture, from the diameter of the sun and 
moon. 

The word I will take is the word eutrapelos, 



414 A SPEECH AT ETON. [y. 

eutrapelia. Let us consider it first as it occurs in the 
famous Funeral Oration put by Thucydides into the 
mouth of Pericles. The word stands there for one 
of the chief of those qualities which have made 
Athens, says Pericles, "the school of Greece;" for a 
quality by which Athens is eminently representative 
of what is called Hellenism : the quality of flexibility. 
*' A happy and gracious flexibility," Pericles calls this 
quality of the Athenians ; and it is no doubt a 
charming gift. Lucidity of thought, clearness and 
propriety of language, freedom from prejudice and 
freedom from stiff'ness, openness of mind, amiability 
of manners, — all these seem to go along with a certain 
happy flexibility of nature, and to depend upon it. 
Nor does this suppleness and flexibility of nature at 
all necessarily imply, as we English are apt to 
suppose, a relaxed moral fibre and weakness. In 
the Athenian of the best time it did not. " In the 
Athenians," says Professor Curtius, "the sense of 
energy abhorred every kind of waste of time, their 
sense of measure abhorred bombast and redundancy, 
and their clear intelhgence everything partaking of 
obscurity or vagueness ; it was their habit in all 
things to advance directly and resolutely to the goal. 
Their dialect is characterised by a superior serious- 
ness, manliness, and vigour of language." 

There is no sign of relaxation of moral fibre here ; 
and yet, at the same time, the Athenians were 
eminent for a happy and gracious flexibility. That 
quality, as we all know, is not a characteristic quality 
of the Germanic nations, to which we ourselves 
belong. Men are edueable, and when we read of the 
abhorrence of the Attic mind for redundancy and 
obscurity of expression, its love for direct and telling 
speech, and then think of modern German, we may 
say with satisfaction that the circumstances of our 



v.] A SPEECH AT ETON. 415 

life have at any rate educated us into the use of 
straightforward and vigorous forms of language. 
But they have not educated us into flexibility. All 
around us we may observe proofs of it. The state of 
Ireland is a proof of it. We are rivals with Eussia 
in Central Asia, and at this moment it is particularly 
interesting to note how the want of just this one 
Athenian quality of flexibility seems to tell against 
us in our Asiatic rivalry with Russia. " Russia," 
observes one who is perhaps the first of living 
geographers, — an Austrian, Herr von Hellwald, — 
" possesses far more shrewdness, flexibility, and con- 
geniality than England ; qualities adapted to make 
the Asiatic more tractable." And again : " There 
can be no dispute which of the two, England or 
Russia, is the more civilised nation. But it is just as 
certain that the highly civilised English understand 
but indifi'erently how to raise their Asiatic subjects 
to their own standard of civilisation; whilst the 
Russians attain, with their much lower standard of 
civilisation, far greater results amongst the Asiatic 
tribes, whom they know how to assimilate in the 
most remarkable manner. Of course they can only 
bring them to the same level which they have reached 
themselves ; but the little which they can and do 
communicate to them counts actually for much more 
than the great boons which the English do not know 
how to impart. Under the auspices of Russia the 
advance in civilisation amongst the Asiatics is indeed 
slow and inconsiderable, but steady, and suitable to 
their natural capacities and the disposition of their 
race. On the other hand, they remain indifferent to 
British civilisation, which is absolutely incompre- 
hensible to them." 

Our word " flexibility " has here carried us a long 
way, carried us to Turkestan and the valleys of the 



416 A SPEECH AT ETOX. [v. 

Jaxartes and Oxus. Let us get back to Greece, at 
any rate. The generation of Pericles is succeeded by 
the generation of Plato and Aristotle. Still the 
charming and Athenian quality of eutrapelia continues 
to be held in high esteem. Only the word comes to 
stand more particularly for flexibility and felicity in 
the give-and-take of gay and light social intercourse. 
With Aristotle it is one of the virtues : the virtue of 
him who in this pleasant sort of intercourse, so 
relished by the Greeks, manages exactly to hit the 
happy and right mean ; the virtue opposed to buf- 
foonery on the one side, and to morose rusticity, or 
clbwnishness, on the other. It is in especial the 
virtue of the young, and is akin to the grace and 
charm of youth. When old men try to adapt them- 
selves to the young, says Plato, they betake them- 
selves, in imitation of the young, to eutrapelia and 
pleasantry. 

Four hundred years pass, and we come to the 
date of the Epistle to the Ephesians. The word 
eutrapelia rises in the mind of the writer of that 
Epistle. It rises to St. Paul's mind, and he utters 
it ; but in how different a sense from the praising 
and admiring sense in which we have seen the word 
used by Thucydides and Aristotle ! Eutrapelia., 
which once stood for that eminently Athenian and 
Hellenic virtue of happy and gracious flexibility, now 
conveys this favourable 'sense no longer, but is ranked, 
with filthiness and foolish talking, among things 
which are not convenient. Like these, it is not to 
be even so much as once named among the followers 
of God : " neither filthiness, nor foolish talking, nor 
jesting {eutrapelia), which are not convenient." 

This is an extraordinary change, you will say. 
But now, as we have descended four hundred years 
from Aristotle to St. Paul, let us ascend, not four 



v.] A SPEECH AT ETON. 417 

hundred, not quite even one hundred years, from 
Thucydides to Pindar. The nligious Theban poet, 
we sliall see (and the thing is surely very remarkable), 
speaks of the quality of eutrapelia in the same «lis- 
approving and austere way as the writer of the 
Epistle to the Ephesians. The young and noble 
Jason appears at lolcos, and being questioned about 
himself by Pelias, he answers that he has been trained 
in the nurture and admonition of the old and just 
Centaur, Chiron. "From his cave I come, from 
Chariclo and Philyra, his stainless daughters, who 
there nursed me. Lo, these twenty years am I with 
them, and there hath been found in me neither deed 
nor word that is not convenient ; and now, behold, I 
am come home, that I may recover my father's king- 
dom." The adjective eutrapelos, as it is here used in 
connection with its two nouns, means exactly a word 
or deed, in Biblical phrase, of vain lightness, a word 
or deed such as is not convenient. 

There you have the history of the varying use of 
the words eutrapelos, eutrapelia. And now see how 
this varying use gives us a clue to the order and 
sense, as we say, of all that Greek world so nearly 
and wonderfully connected with us, so profoundly 
interesting for us, so full of precious lessons. 

We must begin with generalities, but we will try 
not to lose ourselves in them, and not to remain 
amongst them long. Human life and human society 
arise, we know, out of the presence in man of certain 
needs, certain instincts, and out of the constant 
endeavour of these instincts to satisfy and develop 
themselves. We may briefly sum them up, these 
needs or instincts, as being, first and foremost, a 
general instinct of expansion ; then, as being instincts 
following diverse great lines, which may be conveni- 
ently designated as the lines of conduct, of intellect 

VOL. IV. 2 E 



418 A SPEECH AT ETON. [v. 

and knowledge, of beauty, of social life and manners. 
Some lines are more in view and more in honour at 
one time, some at another. Some men and some 
nations are more eminent on one line, some on 
another. But the final aim, of making our own and 
of harmoniously combining the powers to be reached 
on each and all of these great lines, is the ideal of 
human life. And our race is for ever recalled to this 
aim, and held fast to it, by the instinct of self-preser- 
vation in humanity. 

The ideal of human life being such as it is, all 
these great and diverse powers, to the attainment of 
which our instincts, as we have seen, impel us, hang 
together, — cannot be truly possessed and employed 
in isolation. Yet it is convenient, owing to the way 
in which we find them actually exhibiting themselves 
in human life and in history, to treat them separately, 
and to make distinctions of rank amongst them. In 
this view, we may say that the power of conduct is 
the greatest of all the powers now named ; that it is 
even three -fourths of life. And wherever much is 
founded amongst men, there the power of conduct 
has surely been present and at work, although of 
course there may be and are, along with it, other 
powers too. 

Now, then, let us look at the beginnings of that 
Greece to which we owe so much, and which we may 
almost, so far as our intellectual life is concerned, 
call the mother of us all. " So well has she done 
her part," as the Athenian Isocrates truly says of her, 
" that the name of Greeks seems no longer to stand 
for a race but to stand for intelligence itself; and 
they who share in Hellenic culture are called Greeks 
even before those who are merely of Hellenic blood." 

The beginnings of this wonderful Greece, what 
are they? 



v.] A SPEECH AT ETON. 419 

Greek history begins for us with the sanctuaries 
of Tempe and Delphi, and with the Apolline worship 
and priesthood which in those sanctuaries under 
Olympus and Parnassus established themselves. The 
northern sanctuary of Tempe soon yielded to Delphi 
as the centre of national Hellenic life and of Apolline 
religion. We are accustomed to think of Apollo as 
the awakener and nourisher of what is called genius, 
and so from the very first the Greeks, too, considered 
him. But in those earliest days of Hellas, and at 
Delphi, where the hardy and serious tribes of the 
Dorian Highlands made their influence felt, Apollo 
was not only the nourisher of genius, he was also the 
author of every higher moral effort. He was the 
prophet of his father Zeus, in the highest view of 
Zeus, as the source of the ideas of moral order and of 
right. For to this higher significance had the names 
of Zeus and Phoebus, — names originally derived from 
sun and air, — gradually risen. They had come to 
designate a Father, the source of the ideas of moral 
order and of right ; and a Son, his prophet, purifying 
and inspiring the soul with these ideas, and also with 
the idea of intellectual beauty. 

Now, the ideas of moral order and of right which 
are in human nature, and which are, indeed, a main 
part of human life, were especially, we are told, a 
treasure possessed by the less gay and more solitary 
tribes in the mountains of Northern Greece. These 
Dorian tribes were Delphi's first pupils. And the 
graver view of life, the thoughts which give depth 
and solemnity to man's consciousness, the moral ideas, 
in short, of conduct and righteousness, were the 
governing elements in the manner of spirit pro- 
pagated from Delphi. The words written up on the 
temple at Delphi called all comers to soberness and 
righteousness. The Doric and ^olic Pindar felt pro- 



420 A SPEECH AT ETON. [v. 

foundly this severe influence of Delphi. It is not to 
be considered as an influence at war with the idea of 
intellectual beauty ; — to mention the name of Pindar 
is in itself sufiicient to show how little this was, or 
could be, the case. But it was, above all, an influ- 
ence charged with the ideas of moral order and of right. 

And there were confronting these Dorian founders 
of Hellas, and well known to them, and connected 
with them in manifold ways, other Greeks of a very 
diff'erent spiritual type ; the Asiatic Greeks of Ionia, 
full of brilliancy and mobility, but over whom the 
ideas of moral order and of right had too little power, 
and who could never succeed in founding among 
themselves a serious and powerful state. It was 
evident that the great source of the incapacity which 
accompanied, in these lonians of Asia, so much 
brilliancy, that the great enemy in them to the Halt, 
as Goethe calls it, the steadiness, which moral natures 
so highly prize, was their extreme mobility of spirit, 
their gay lightness, their eutrapelia. For Pindar, 
therefore, the word eutrapelos, expressing easy flexi- 
bility and mobility, becomes a word of stern oppro- 
brium, and conveys the reproach of vain folly. 

The Athenians were lonians. But they were 
lonians transplanted to Hellas, and who had 
breathed, as a Hellenic nation, the air of Delphi, 
that bracing atmosphere of the ideas of moral order 
and of right. In this atmosphere the Athenians, 
Ionian as they were, imbibed influences of character 
and steadiness, which for a long while balanced their 
native vivacity and mobility, distinguished them pro- 
foundly from the lonians of Asia, and gave them men 
like Aristides. 

Still, the Athenians were lonians. They had the 
Ionian quickness and flexibility, the Ionian turn for 
gaiety, wit, and fearless thinking, the Ionian im- 



v.] A SPEECH AT ETON. 421 

patience of restraint. This nature of theirs asserted 
itself, first of all, as an impatience of false restraint. 
It asserted itself in opposition to the real faults of 
the Dorian spirit, — faults which became more and 
more manifest as time went on to the unprogressive- 
ness of this spirit, to its stiffness, hardness, narrowness, 
prejudice, want of insight, want of amiability. And 
in real truth, by the time of Pericles, Delphi, the 
great creation of the Dorian spirit, had broken down, 
and was a witness to that spirit's lack of a real 
power of life and growth. Bribes had discredited 
the sanctity of Delphi ; seriousness and vital power 
had left it. It had come to be little more than a 
name, and what continued to exist there was merely 
a number of forms. 

Now then was the turn of the Athenians. With 
the idea of conduct, so little grasped by the lonians 
of Asia, still deeply impressed on their soul, they 
freely and joyfully called forth also that pleasure in 
life, that love of clear thinking and of fearless dis- 
cussion, that gay social temper, that ease and 
lightness, that gracious flexibility, which were in 
their nature. These were their gifts, and they did 
well to bring them forth. The gifts are in them- 
selves gifts of great price, like those other gifts 
contributed by the primitive and serious Dorian 
tribes, their rivals. Man has to advance, we have 
seen, along several lines, and he does well to advance 
along them. " In the morning sow thy seed, and in 
the evening withhold not thine hand ; for thou 
knowest not whether shall prosper, either this or 
that, or whether they both shall be alike good." 

And at this moment Thucydides, a man in whom 
the old virtue and the new reason were in just 
balance, has put into the mouth of Pericles, another 
man of the same kind, an encomium on the modejn 



422 A SPEECH AT ETON. [v. 

spirit, as we may call it, of which Athens was the re- 
presentative. By the mouth of Pericles, Thucydides 
condemned old-fashioned narrowness and illiberality. 
He applauded enjoyment of life. He applauded 
freedom from restraint. He applauded clear and 
fearless thinking, — the resolute bringing of our 
actions to the rule of reason. His expressions on 
this point greatly remind me of the fine saying of 
one of your own worthies, " the ever-memorable Mr. 
John Hales, of Eton College." "I comprise it all," 
says Hales, " in two words : what and wherefore. 
That part of your burden which contains what, you 
willingly take up. But that other, which compre- 
hends why, that is either too hot or too heavy ; you 
dare not meddle with it. But I must add that also 
to your burden, or else I must leave you for idle 
persons ; for without the knowledge of why, of the 
grounds or reasons of things, there is no possibility 
of not being deceived." It seems to me not improb- 
able that Hales had here in his mind the very 
words of the Funeral Oration : " "We do not esteem 
discussion a hurt to action ; what we consider 
mischievous is rather the setting oneself to work 
without first getting the guidance of reason." 
Finally, Thucydides applauded the quality of nature 
which above all others made the Athenians the men 
for the new era, and he used the word eutrapelos in 
its proper and natural sense, to denote the quality of 
happy and gracious flexibility. 

Somewhat narrowed, so as to mean especially 
flexibility and adroitness in light social intercourse, 
but still employed in its natural and favourable sense, 
the word descends, as we saw, to Plato and Aristotle. 
Isocrates speaks of the quality as one which the old 
school regarded with alarm and disapproval ; but, 
nevertheless, for him too the word has evidently, in 



v.] A SPEECH AT ETON. 423 

itself, just the same natural and favourable sense 
whicli it has for Aristotle and Plato. 

I quoted, just now, some words from the Book of 
Ecclesiastes, one of the wisest and one of the worst 
understood books in the Bible. Let us hear how the 
writer goes on after the words which I quoted. He 
proceeds thus : " Truly the light is sweet, and a 
pleasant thing it is for the eyes to behold the sun ; 
yea, if a man live many years, let him rejoice in 
them all ; and let him remember the days of dark- 
ness, for they shall be many. All that is future is 
vanity. Rejoice, young man, in thy youth, and 
let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth, 
and walk in the ways of thine heart and in the sight 
of thine eyes ; — but know thou that for all these 
things God will bring thee into judgment." Let us 
apply these admirable words to the life and work of 
the Athenian people. 

The old rigid order, in Greece, breaks down ; a 
new power appears on the scene. It is the Athenian 
genius, with its freedom from restraint, its flexibility, 
its bold reason, its keen enjoyment of life. Well, let 
it try what it can do. Up to a certain point it is 
clearly in the right ; possibly it may be in the right 
altogether. Let it have free play, and show what it 
can do. " In the morning sow thy seed, and in the 
evening withhold not thine hand ; for thou knowest 
not whether shall prosper, either this or that, or 
whether they both shall be alike good." Whether 
the old line is good, or the new line, or whether they 
are both of them good, and must both of them be 
used, cannot be known without trying. Let the 
Athenians try, therefore, and let their genius have 
full swing. "Rejoice; walk in the ways of thine 
heart and in the sight of thine eyes ; — hut hww thou 
that for all these things God will bring thee into judg- 



424 A SPEECH AT ETON. [v. 

menty In other words : Your enjoyment of life, 
your freedom from restraint, your clear and bold 
reason, your flexibility, are natural and excellent; 
but on condition that you know how to live with 
them, that you make a real success of them. 

And a man like Pericles or Phidias seemed to 
afford promise that Athens would know how to make 
a real success of her qualities, and that an alliance 
between the old morality and the new freedom might 
be, through the admirable Athenian genius, happily 
established. And with such promise before his eyes, 
a serious man like Thucydides might well give, to 
the new freedom, the high and warm praise which 
we see given to it in the Funeral Oration. 

But it soon became evident that the balance 
between the old morality and the new freedom was 
not to be maintained, and that the Athenians had 
the defects, as the saying is, of their qualities. 
Their minds were full of other things than those 
ideas of moral order and of right on which primitive 
Hellas had formed itself, and of which they them- 
selves had, as worshippers in the shadow of the 
Parnassian sanctuary, once deeply felt the power. 
These ideas lost their predominance. The pre- 
dominance for Athens, — and, indeed, for Hellas at 
large, — of a national religion of righteousness, of 
grave ideas of conduct and moral order, predominat- 
ing over all other ideas, disappeared with the decline 
of Delphi, never to return. Not only did these ideas 
lose exclusive predominance, they lost all due weight. 
Still, indeed, they inspired poetry; and then, after 
inspiring the great Attic poets, -^schylus and 
Sophocles, they inspired the great Attic philosophers, 
Socrates and Plato. But the Attic nation, which 
henceforth stood, in fact, for the Hellenic people, 
could not manage to keep its mind bent sufficiently 



v.] A SPEECH AT ETON. 425 

upon them. The Attic nation had its mind bent on 
other things. It threw itself ardently upon other 
lines, which man, indeed, has to follow, which at one 
time, in Greece, had not been enough followed, of 
which Athens strongly felt the attraction, and on 
which it had rare gifts for excelling. The Attic 
nation gave its heart to those powers which we have 
designated, for the sake of brevity and convenience, 
as those of expansion, intellect, beauty, social life and 
manners. Athens and G-reece allowed themselves to 
be diverted and distracted from attention to conduct, 
and to the ideas which inspire conduct. 

It was not that the old religious beliefs of Greece, 
to which the ideas that inspire conduct had attached 
themselves, did not require to be transformed by 
the new spirit. They did. The greatest and best 
Hellenic souls, Anaxagoras, Pericles, Phidias, Sopho- 
cles, Socrates, Plato, felt, and rightly felt, that they 
did. The judicious historian of Greece, whom I have 
already quoted. Professor Curtius, says expressly : 
" The popular faith was everywhere shaken, and a 
life resting simply on the traditionary notions was 
no longer possible. A dangerous rupture was at hand, 
unless the ancient faith were purged and elevated in 
such a manner as to meet the wants of the age. 
Mediators in this sense appeared in the persons of 
the great poets of Athens." Yes, they appeared ; 
but the current was setting too strongly another way. 
Poetry itself, after the death of Sophocles, "was 
seized," says Professor Curtius, " by the same current 
which dissolved the foundations of the people's life, 
and which swept away the soil wherein the emotions 
of the classical period had been rooted. The old 
perished ; but the modern age, with all its readiness 
in thought and speech, was incapable of creating a 
new art as a support to its children." 



426 A SPEECH AT ETON. [v. 

Socrates was so penetrated with the new intellect- 
ual spirit that he was called a sophist. But the 
great effort of Socrates was to recover that firm 
foundation for human life, which a misuse of the 
new intellectual spirit was rendering impossible. 
He effected much more for after times, and for the 
world, than for his own people. His amount of 
success with Alcibiades may probably be taken as 
giving us, well enough, the measure of his success 
with the Athenian people at large. "As to the 
susceptibility of Alcibiades," we are told, " Socrates 
had. not come too late, for he still found in him a 
youthful soul, susceptible of high inspirations. But 
to effect in him a permanent reaction, and a lasting 
and fixed change of mind, was beyond the power 
even of a Socrates." Alcibiades oscillated and fell 
away ; and the Athenian people, too, and Hellas as 
a whole, oscillated and fell away. 

So it came to pass, that after ^schylus had sadly 
raised his voice to deprecate "unblessed freedom 
from restraint," and after complaints had been heard, 
again and again, of the loss of "the ancient morality 
and piety," of "the old elements of Hellas, reflection 
and moderation, discipline and social morality," it 
came to pass that finally, at the end of the Pelopon- 
nesian war, "one result," the historian tells us, "one 
result alone admitted of no doubt ; and that was, the 
horribly rapid progress of the demoralisation of the 
Hellenic nation." 

Years and centuries rolled on, and, first, the 
Hellenic genius issued forth invading and vanquish- 
ing with Alexander; and then, when Eome had 
afterwards conquered Greece, conquered the con- 
querors, and overspread the civilised world. And 
still, joined to all the gifts and graces which that 
admirable genius brought with it, there went, as a 



v.] A SPEECH AT ETON. 427 

kind of fatal accompaniment, moral inadequacy. 
And if one asked why this was so, it seemed as if it 
could only be because the power of seriousness, of 
tenacious grasp upon grave and moral ideas, was 
wanting. And this again seemed as if it could only 
have for its cause, that these Hellenic natures were, 
in respect of their impressionability, mobility, flexi- 
bility, under the spell of a graceful but dangerous 
fairy, who would not let it be otherwise. ''Lest 
thou shouldst ponder the path of life," says the Wise 
Man, " her ways are moveable, that thou canst not hnoiv 
them." Then the new and reforming spirit, the 
Christian spirit, which was rising in the world, 
turned sternly upon this gracious flexibility, changed 
the sense of its name, branded it with infamy, and 
classed it, along with " filthiness and foolish talking," 
among " things w^hich are not convenient." 

Now, there you see the historical course of our 
words eutrapelos, eutra;pelia, and a specimen of the 
range, backwards and forwards, which a single 
phrase in one of our Greek or Latin classics may 
have. 

And I might go yet further, and might show you, 
in the mediaeval world, eutrapelia, or flexibility, quite 
banished, clear straightforward Attic thinking quite 
lost; restraint, stoppage, and prejudice, regnant. 
And coming down to our own times, I might show 
you fearless thinking and flexibility once more, after 
many vicissitudes, coming into honour; and again, 
perhaps, not without their accompaniment of danger. 
And the moral from all this, — apart from the parti- 
cular moral that in our classical studies we may 
everywhere find clues which will lead us a long 
way, — the moral is, not that flexibility is a bad 
thing, but that the Greek flexibility was really not 
flexible enough, because it could not enough bend 



428 A SPEECH AT ETON. [v. 

itself to the moral ideas which are so large a part of 
life. Here, I say, is the true moral : that man has 
to make progress along diverse lines, in obedience to 
a diversity of aspirations and powers, the sum of 
which is truly his nature ; and that he fails and falls 
short until he learns to advance upon them all, and 
to advance upon them harmoniously. 

Yes, this is the moral, and we all need it, and no 
nation more than ours. We so easily think that life 
is all on one line ! Our nation, for instance, is above 
all things a political nation, and is apt to make far 
too much of politics. Many of us, — though not so 
very many, I suppose, of you here, — are Liberals, 
and think that to be a Liberal is quite enough for a 
man. Probably most of you here will have no 
difficulty in believing that to be a Liberal is not 
alone enough for a man, is not saving. One might 
even take, — and with your notions it would probably 
be a great treat for you, — one might take the last 
century of Athens, the century preceding the "dis- 
honest victory " of the Macedonian power, and show 
you a society dying of the triumph of the Liberal 
party. And then, again, as the young are generous, 
you might like to give the discomfited Liberals a 
respite, to let the other side have its turn ; and you 
might consent to be shown, as you could be shown 
in the age of Trajan and of the Antonines, a society 
dying of the triumph of the Conservative party. 
They were excellent people, the Conservative Roman 
aristocracy of that epoch ; — excellent, most respect- 
able people, like the Conservatives of our own 
acquaintance. Only Conservatism, like Liberalism, 
taken alone, is not sufficient, is not of itself saving. 

But you have had enough for one evening. And 
besides, the tendencies of the present day in education 
being what they are, before you proceed to hear 



I 



v.] A SPEECH AT ETON. 429 

more of this sort of thing, you ought certainly to 
be favoured, for several months to come, with a 
great many scientific lectures, and to busy yourselves 
considerably with the diameter of the sun and 
moon. 



VI. 

THE FEENCH PLAY IN LONDOK 

English opinion concerning France, our neighbour 
and rival, was formerly full of hostile prejudice, and is 
still, in general, quite sufficiently disposed to severity. 
But, from time to time, France or things French 
become for the solid English public the object of 
what our neighbours call an enjouemenf, — an infatuated 
interest. Such an enjouement Wordsworth witnessed 
in 1802, after the Peace of Amiens, and it disturbed 
his philosophic mind greatly. Every one was rush- 
ing to Paris ; every one was in admiration of the 
First Consul : — 

"Lords, lawyers, statesmen, squires of low degree, 
Men known and men unknown, sick, lame, and blind, 
Post forward all like creatures of one kind, 
With first-fruit offerings crowd to bend the knee, 
In France, before tbe new-born majesty." 

All measure, all dignity, all real intelligence of the 
situation, so Wordsworth complained, were lost under 
the charm of the new attraction : — 

" 'Tis ever thus. Ye men of prostrate mind, 
A seemly reverence may be paid to power ; 
But that's a loyal virtue, never sown 
In haste, nor springing with a transient shower. 



VI.] THE FEEXCH PLAT IX LONDON. 431 

"WTien truth, when sense, when liberty were flown, 
What hardship had it been to wait an hour ? 
Shame on you, feeble heads, to slavery prone !" 

One or two moralists there may still be found, 
who comment in a like spirit of impatience upon the 
extraordinary attraction exercised by the French 
company of actors which has lately left us. The 
rush of "lords, lawyers, statesmen, squires of low 
degree, men known and men unknown," of those 
acquainted with the French language perfectly, of those 
acquainted with it a little, and of those not acquainted 
with it at all, to the performances at the Gaiety 
Theatre, — the universal occupation with the perform- 
ances and performers, the length and solemnity with 
which the newspapers chronicled and discussed them, 
the seriousness with which the whole repertory of 
the company was taken, the passion for certain 
pieces and for certain actors, the great ladies who 
by the acting of Mdlle. Sarah Bernhardt were 
revealed to themselves, and who could not resist 
the desire of telHng her so, — all this has moved, I 
say, a surviving and aged morahst here and there 
amongst us to exclaim : " Shame on you, feeble 
heads, to slavery prone ! " The English public, 
according to these cynics, have been exhibiting 
themselves as men of prostrate mind, who pay to 
power a reverence anything but seemly ; we have 
been conducting ourselves with just that absence of 
tact, measure, and correct perception, with all that 
slowness to see when one is making oneself ridi- 
culous, which belongs to the people of our English 
race. 

The nice sense of measure is certainly not one of 
Nature's gifts to her English children. But then we 
all of us fail in it, we natives of Great Britain ; we 
have all of us yielded to infatuation at some moment 



432 THE FRENCH PLAY IN LONDON. [vi. 

of our lives ; we are all in the same boat, and one 
of us has no right to laugh at the other. I am sure 
I have not. I remember how in my youth, after a 
first sight of the divine Rachel at the Edinburgh 
Theatre, in the part of Hermione, I followed her to 
Paris, and for two months never missed one of her 
representations. I, at least, will not cast a stone at 
the London public for running eagerly after the 
charming company of actors which has just left us ; 
or at the great ladies who are seeking for soul and 
have found it in Mdlle. Sarah Bernhardt. I will 
not quarrel with our newspapers for their unremitting 
attention to these French performances, their copious 
criticism of them; particularly when the criticism 
is so interesting and so good as that which the 
Times and the Daily News and the Fall Mall Gazette 
have given us. Copious, indeed ! — why should not 
our newspapers be copious on the French play, 
when they are copious on the Clewer case, and the 
Mackonochie case, and so many other matters besides, 
a great deal less important and interesting, all of 
them, than the Maison de Molihre ? 

So I am not going to join the cynics, and to find 
fault with the enjouement, the infatuation, shown by 
the English public in its passion for the French plays 
and players. A passion of this kind may be salutary, 
if we will learn the lessons for us with which it is 
charged. Unfortunately, few people who feel a 
passion think of learning anything from it. A man 
feels a passion, he passes through it, and then he 
goes his way and straightway forgets, as the Apostle 
says, what manner of naan he was. Above all, this 
is apt to happen with us English, who have, as an 
eminent German professor is good enough to tell us, 
" so much genius, so little method." The much genius 
hurries us into infatuations ; the little method pre- 



VI.] THE FRENCH PLAY IN LONDON. 433 

vents our learning the right and wholesome lesson 
from them. Let us join, then, devoutly and with 
contrition, in the prayer of the German professor's 
great countryman, Goethe, a prayer which is more 
needful, one may surely say, for us than for him : 
" God help us, and enlighten us for the time to come ! 
that we may not stand in our own way so much, but 
may have clear notions of the consequences of things ! " 

To get a clear notion of the consequences which 
do in re'ason follow from what we have been seeing 
and admiring at the Gaiety Theatre, to get a clear 
notion of them, and frankly to draw them, is the 
object which I propose to myself here. I am not 
going to criticise one by one the French actors and 
actresses who have been giving us so much pleasure. 
For a foreigner this must always be a task, as it 
seems to me, of some peril. Perilous or not, it has 
been abundantly attempted ; and to attempt it yet 
again, now that the performances are over and the 
performers gone back to Paris, would be neither 
timely nor interesting. One remark I will make, a 
remark suggested by the inevitable comparison of 
Mdlle. Sarah Bernhardt with Rachel. One talks 
vaguely of genius, but I had never till now com- 
prehended how much of Eachel's superiority was 
purely in intellectual power, how eminently this 
power counts in the actor's art as in all art, how just 
is the instinct which led the Greeks to mark with a 
high and severe stamp the Muses. Temperament 
and quick intelligence, passion, nervous mobility, 
grace, smile, voice, charm, poetry, — Mdlle. Sarah 
Bernhardt has them all. One watches her with 
pleasure, with admiration, — and yet not without a 
secret disquietude. Sonjething is wanting, or, at 
least, not present in sufficient force ; something 
which alone can Secure and fix her administration of 

A^OL. IV. 2 F 



434 THE FRENCH PLAY IN LONDON. [vi. 

all the charming gifts which she has, can alone keep 
them fresh, keep them sincere, save them from perils 
by caprice, perils by mannerism. That something is 
high intellectual power. It was here that Eachel 
was so great ; she began, one says to oneself as one 
recalls her image and dwells upon it, — she began 
almost where Mdlle. Sarah Bernhardt ends. 

But I return to my object, — the lessons to be 
learnt by us from the immense attraction which the 
French company has exercised, the consequences to 
be drawn from it. Certainly we have something to 
learn from it, and something to unlearn. What 
have we to unlearn? Are we to unlearn our old 
estimate of serious French poetry and drama 1 For 
every lover of poetry and of the drama, this is a 
very interesting question. In the great and serious 
kinds of poetry, we used to think that the French 
genius, admirable as in so many other ways it is, 
shoAved radical weakness. But there is a new 
generation growing up amongst us, — and to this 
young and stirring generation who of us would not 
gladly belong, even at the price of having to catch 
some of its illusions and to ])ass through them 1 — a 
new generation which takes French poetry and drama 
as seriously as Greek, and for which M. Victor Hugo 
is a great poet of the race and lineage of Shakspeare. 

M. Victor Hugo is a great romance-writer. There 
are people who are disposed to class all imaginative 
producers together, and to call them all by the name 
of poet. Then a great romance-writer will be a great 
poet. Above all are the French inclined to give this 
wide extension to the name poet, and the inclination 
is very characteristic of them. It betrays that very 
defect which we have mentioned, the inadequacy of 
their genius in the higher regions of poetry. If they 
were more at home in those regions, they would feel 



VI.] THE FEENCH PLAY IN LONDON. 435 

the essential difference between imaginative produc- 
tion in verse, and imaginative production in prose, 
too strongly, to be ever inclined to call both by the 
common name of poetry. They would perceive with 
us, that M. Victor Hugo, for instance, or Sir Walter 
Scott, may be a great romance-writer, and may yet 
be by no means a great poet. 

Poetry is simply the most delightful and perfect 
form of utterance that human words can reach. Its 
rhythm and measure, elevated to a regularity, cer- 
tainty, and force very different from that of the 
rhythm and measure which can pervade prose, are 
a part of its perfection. The more of genius that a 
nation has for high poetry, the more will the rhythm 
and measure which its postical utterance adopts be 
distinguished by adequacy and beauty. That is why 
M. Henry Cochin's remark on Shakspeare, which I 
have elsewhere quoted, is so good : " Shakspeare is 
not only," says M. Henry Cochin, "the king of the 
realm of thought, he is also the king of poetic rhythm 
and style. Shakspeare has succeeded in giving us 
the most varied, the most harmonious verse, which 
has ever sounded upon the human ear since the 
verse of the Greeks." 

Let us have a line or two of Shakspeare's verse 
before us, just to supply the mind with a standard 
of reverence in the discussion of this matter. We 
may take the lines from him almost at random : — 

" Five hundred poor I have in yearly pay, 
"Who twice a day their wither'd hands hold up 
Toward heaven, to pardon blood ; and I have built 
Two chantries, where the sad and solemn priests 
Sing still for Richard's soul." 

Yes, there indeed is the verse of Shakspeare, the 
verse of the highest English poetry ; there is what 



436 THE FEENCH PLAY IN LONDON. [vi. 

M. Henry Cochin calls " the majestic English iambic!" 
We will not inflict Greek upon our readers, but every 
one who knows Greek will remember that the iambic 
of the Attic tragedians is a rhythm of the same high 
and splendid quality. 

Which of us doubts that imaginative production, 
uttering itself in such a form as this, is altogether 
another and a higher thing from imaginative produc- 
tion uttering itself in any of the forms of prose 1 
And if we find a nation doubting whether there 
is any great difference between imaginative and 
eloquent production in verse and imaginative and 
eloquent production in prose, and inclined to call 
all imaginative producers by the common name of 
poets, then we may be sure of one thing : namely, 
that this nation has never yet succeeded in finding 
the highest and most adequate form for poetry. 
Because, if it had, it could never have doubted of 
the essential superiority of this form to all prose 
forms of utterance. And if a nation has never 
succeeded in creating this high and adequate form 
for its poetry, then we may conclude that it is not 
gifted with the genius for high poetry; since the 
genius for high poetry calls forth the high and 
adequate form, and is inseparable from it. So that, 
on the one hand, from the absence of conspicuous 
genius in a people for poetry, we may predict the 
absence of an adequate poetical form ; and on the 
other hand, again, from the want of an adequate 
poetical form, we may infer the want of conspicuous 
national genius for poetry. 

And we may proceed, supposing that our estimate 
of a nation's success in poetry is said to be much 
too low, and is called in question, in either of two 
ways. If we are said to underrate, for instance, the 
production of Corneille and Eacine in poetry, we 



VI.] THE FRENCH PLAY IN LONDON. 437 

may compare this production in power, in penetra- 
tiveness, in criticism of life, in ability to call forth 
our energy and joy, with the production of Homer 
and Shakspeare. M. Victor Hugo is said to be a 
poet of the race and lineage of Shakspeare, and I 
hear astonishment expressed at my not ranking him 
much above Wordsworth. Well, then, compare their 
production in cases where it lends itself to a compar- 
ison. Compare the poetry of the moonlight scene in 
Hernani, really the most poetical scene in that play, 
with the poetry of the moonlight scene in the 
Merclmnt of Venice. Compare 

"... Sur nous, tout en dormant, 
La nature h. demi veille amoureusement " — 



with 



Sit, Jessica ; look how the floor of heaven 
Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold ! ' 



Compare the laudation of their own country, an 
inspiring but also a trying theme for a poet, by 
Shakspeare and Wordsworth on the one hand, and 
by M. Victor Hugo on the other. Compare Shak- 
speare's 

"This precious stone set in the silver sea, 
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England " — 

or compare Wordsworth's 

"We must be free or die, Avho speak the tongue 
Which Shakspeare spake, the faith and morals hold 
Which Milton held ..." 

with M. Victor Hugo's 

" Non, France, I'univers a besoin que tu vives ! 
Je le redis, la France est un besoin des hommes." 

Who does not recognise the difference of spirit here ? 



438 THE FEEXCH PLAY IN LONDON. [vi. 

And the difference is, that the English lines have 
the distinctive spirit of high poetry, and the French 
lines have not. 

Here we have been seeking to attend chiefly to 
the contents and spirit of the verses chosen. Let us 
now attend, so far as we can, to form only, and the 
result will be the same. We will confine ourselves, 
since our subject is the French play in London, to 
dramatic verse. We require an adequate form of 
verse for high poetic drama. The accepted form 
with the French is the rhymed Alexandrine. Let 
us keep the iambic of the Greeks or of Shakspeare, 
let us keep such verse as, 

"This precious stone set in a silver sea," 

present to our minds. Then let us take such verse 
as this from Hernani : — 

"Le comte d'Onate, qui Taime aussi, la garde 
Et comme un majordome et cojnme un amoureux. 
Quelque reitre, une nuit, gardien peu langoureux, 
Pourrait bien, " etc. etc. 

or as this, from the same : — 

" Quant a lutter ensemble 
Sur le terrain d'amour, beau champ qui toujours tremble, 
De fadaises, mon cher, je sais mal faire assaut." 



The words in italics will suffice to give us, I think, 
the sense of what constitutes the fatal fault of the 
rhyming Alexandrine of French tragedy, — its in- 
curable artificiality, its want of the fluidity, the 
naturalness, the rapid forward movement of true 
dramatic verse. M. Victor Hugo is said to be a 
cunning and mighty artist in Alexandrines, and so 
unquestionably he is ; but he is an artist in a form 
radically inadequate and inferior, and in which a 



VI.] THE FRENCH PLAY IN LONDON. 439 

drama like that of Sophocles or Shakspeare is im- 
possible. 

It happens that in our own language we have an 
example of the employment of an inadequate form 
in tragedy and in elevated poetry, and can see the 
result of it. The rhymed ten-syllable couplet, the 
heroic couplet as it is often called, is such a form. 
In the earlier work of Shakspeare, work adopted or 
adapted by him even if not altogether his own work, 
we find this form often employed : — 

"Alas ! what joy shall noble Talbot bave 
To bid his young son welcome to his grave ? 
Away ! vexation almost stops my breath 
That sundered friends greet in the hour of death. 
Lucy, farewell ; no more my future can 
But curse the cause I cannot aid the man. 
Maine, Blois, Poitiers and Tours are won away 
'Long all of Somerset and his delay." 

Traces of this form remain in Shakspeare's work to 
the last, in the rhyming of final couplets. But be- 
cause he had so great a genius for true tragic poetry, 
Shakspeare dropped this necessarily inadequate form 
and took a better. We find the rhymed couplet again 
in Dryden's tragedies. But this vigorous rhetorical 
I poet had no real genius for true tragic poetry, and 
his form is itself a proof of it. True tragic poetry is 
impossible with this inadequate form. Again, all 
through the eighteenth century this form was domi- 
nant as the main form for high eff'orts in English 
poetry ; and our serious poetry of that century, 
accordingly, has something inevitably defective and 
unsatisfactory. When it rises out of this, it at the 
same time adopts instinctively a truer form, as Gray 
does in the Elegy. The just and perfect use of the 
ten-syllable couplet is to be seen in Chaucer. As a 
form for tragedy, and for poetry of the most serious 



440 THE FRENCH PLAY IN LONDON. [vi. 

and elevated kind, it is defective. It makes real 
adequacy in poetry of this kind impossible ; and its 
prevalence, for poetry of this kind, proves that those 
amongst whom it prevails have for poetry of this 
kind no signal gift. 

The case of the great Moliere himself will illustrate 
the truth of what I say. Moliere is by far the chief 
name in French poetry; he is one of the very 
greatest names in all literature. He has admirable 
and delightful power, penetrativeness, insight; a 
masterly criticism of life. But he is a comic poet. 
Why ? Had he no seriousness and depth of nature 1 
He had profound seriousness. And would not a 
dramatic poet with this depth of nature be a tragedian 
if he could ? Of course he would. For only by 
breasting in full the storm and cloud of life, breasting 
it and passing through it and above it, can the 
dramatist who feels the weight of mortal things 
liberate himself from the pressure, and rise, as we 
all seek to rise, to content and joy. Tragedy breasts 
the pressure of life. Comedy eludes it, half liberates 
itself from it by irony. But the tragedian, if he has 
the sterner labour, has also the higher prize. Shak- 
speare has more joy than Moliere, more assurance 
and peace. Othello, with all its passion and terror, 
is on the whole a work animating and fortifying; 
more so a thousand times than George Danclin, which 
is mournfully depressing. Moliere, if he could, would 
have given us Othellos instead of George Dandins ; 
let us not doubt it. If he did not give Othellos to 
us, it was because the highest sort of poetic power 
was wanting to him. And if the highest sort of 
poetic power had been not wanting to him but 
present, he would have found no adequate form of 
dramatic verse for conveying it, he would have had 
to create one. For such tasks Moliere had not 



VI.] THE FRENCH PLAY IN LONDON. 441 

power ; and this is only another way of saying that 
for the highest tasks in poetry the genius of his 
nation appears to have not power. But serious spirit 
and great poet that he was, Moliere had far too 
sound an instinct to attempt so earnest a matter as 
tragic drama with inadequate means. It would have 
been a heart-breaking business for him. He did not 
attempt it, therefore, but confined himself to comedy. 
The Misanthrope and the Tartuffe are comedy, but 
they are comedy in verse, poetic comedy. They 
employ the established verse of French dramatic 
poetry, the Alexandrine. Immense power has gone 
to the making of them ; a world of vigorous sense, 
piercing observation, pathetic meditation, profound 
criticism of life. Moliere had also one great advan- 
tage as a dramatist over Shakspeare ; he wrote for a 
more developed theatre, a more developed society. 
Moreover he was at the same time, probably, by 
nature a better theatre-poet than Shakspeare ; he had 
a keener sense for theatrical situation. Shakspeare 
is not rightly to be called, as Goethe calls him, an 
epitomator rather than a dramatist ; but he may 
rightly be called rather a dramatist than a theatre- 
poet. Moliere, — and here his French nature stood 
him in good stead, — was a theatre-poet of the very 
first order. Comedy, too, escapes, as has been already 
said, the test of entire seriousness ; it remains, by 
the law of its being, in a region of comparative 
lightness and of irony. What is artificial can pass 
in comedy more easily. In spite of all these advan- 
tages, the Misanthrope and the Tartuffe have, and 
have by reason of their poetic form, an artificiality 
which makes itself too much felt, and which provokes 
weariness. The freshness and power of Moliere are 
best felt when he uses prose, in pieces such as the 
Avare, or the Fourheries de Scajnn, or George Dandin. 



442 THE FRENCH PLAY IN LONDON. [vi. 

How entirely the contrary is the case with Shak- 
speare ; how undoubtedly is it his verse which shows 
his power most ! But so inadequate a vehicle for 
dramatic poetry is the French Alexandrine, that its 
sway hindered Moliere, one may think, from being a 
tragic poet at all, in spite of his having gifts for this 
highest form of dramatic poetry which are immeasur- 
ably superior to those of any other French poet. And 
in comedy, where Moliere thought he could use the 
Alexandrine, and where he did use it with splendid 
power, it yet in a considerable degree hampered and 
lamed him, so that this true and great poet is actually 
most satisfactory in his prose. 

If Moliere cannot make us insensible to the in- 
herent defects of French dramatic poetry, still less 
can Corneille and Eacine. Corneille has energy and 
nobility, Eacine an often Virgilian sweetness and 
pathos. But while Moliere in depth, penetrativeness, 
and powerful criticism of life, belongs to the same 
family as Sophocles and Shakspeare, Corneille and 
Eacine are quite of another order. We must not be 
misled by the excessive estimate of them among 
their own countrymen. I remember an answer of 
M. Sainte-Beuve, who always treated me with great 
kindness, and to whom I once ventured to say that 
I could not think Lamartine a poet of very high 
importance. "He was important to us" answered 
M. Sainte-Beuve. In a far higher degree can a 
Frenchman say of Corneille and Eacine : " They 
were important to us." Voltaire pronounces of them : 
"These men taught our nation to think, to feel, and 
to express itself." Ces.hommes enseignhrent a la nation 
h penser^ a sentir et h s'exprimer. They were thus the 
instructors and formers of a society in many respects 
the most civilised and consummate that the world 
has ever seen, and which certainly has not been 



VI.] THE FEENCH PLAY IN LONDON. 443 

inclined to underrate its own advantages. How 
natural, then, that it should feel grateful to its 
formers, and should extol them ! " Tell your brother 
Eodolphe," writes Joseph de Maistre from Eussia to 
his daughter at home, "to get on with his French 
poets j let him have them by heart, — the inimitable 
Eacine above all; never mind whether he under- 
stands him or not. I did not understand him, when 
my mother used to come and sit on my bed, and 
repeat from him, and put me to sleep with her 
beautiful voice to the sound of this incomparable 
music. I knew hundreds of lines of him before I 
could read ; and that is why my ears, having drunk 
in this ambrosia betimes, have never been able to 
endure common stuff since." What a spell must 
such early use have had for riveting the affections ; 
and how civilising are such affections, how honourable 
to the society which can be imbued with them, to 
the literature which can inspire them ! Pope was in 
a similar way, though not at all in the same degree, 
a forming and civilising influence to our grandfathers, 
and limited their literary taste while he stimulated 
and formed it. So, too, the Greek boy was fed by 
his mother and nurse with Homer ; but then in this 
case it was Homer ! 

We English had Shakspeare waiting to open our 
eyes, whensoever a favourable moment came, to the 
insufficiencies of Pope. But the French had no 
Shakspeare to open their eyes to the insufficiencies 
of Corneille and Eacine. Great artists like Talma 
and Eachel, whose power, as actors, was far superior 
to the power, as poets, of the dramatists whose work 
they were rendering, filled out with their own life 
and warmth the parts into which they threw them- 
selves, gave body to what was meagre, fire to what 
was cold, and themselves supported the poetry of the 



444 THE FEENCH PLAY IN LONDON. [vi. 

French classic drama rather than were supported by 
it. It was easier to think the poetry of Eacine 
inimitable when Talma or Eachel was seen produc- 
ing in it such inimitable effects. Indeed French 
acting is so good, that there are few pieces, excepting 
always those of Moliere, in the repertory of a com- 
pany such as that which we have just seen, where 
the actors do not show themselves to be superior to 
the pieces they render, and to be worthy of pieces 
which are better. Phhdre is a work of much beauty, 
yet certainly one felt this in seeing Eachel in the 
part of Phedre. I am not sure that one feels it in 
seeing Mdlle, Sarah Bernhardt as PhMre, but I am 
sure that one feels it in seeing her as Dona Sol. 

The tragedy of M. Victor Hugo has always, in- 
deed, stirring events in plenty ; and so long as the 
human nerves are what they are, so long will things 
like the sounding of the horn, in the famous fifth act 
of Hernani, produce a thrill in us. But so will Wer- 
ner's Twenty-fourth of February, or Scott's House of 
Asjpen. A thrill of this sort may be raised in us, and 
yet our poetic sense may remain profoundly dissatis- 
fied. So it remains in Hernani. M. Sarcey, a critic 
always acute and intelligent, and whom one reads 
with profit and pleasure, says that we English are 
fatigued by the long speeches in Hernani, and that we 
do not appreciate what delights French people in it, 
the splendour of the verse, the wondrous beauty of 
the style, the poetry. Here recurs the question as 
to the adequacy of the French Alexandrine as tragic 
verse. If this form is vitally inadequate for tragedy, 
then to speak absolutely of splendour of verse and 
wondrous beauty of style in it when employed for 
tragedy, is misleading. Beyond doubt M. Victor 
Hugo has an admirable gift for versification. So had 
Pope. But to speak absolutely of the splendour of 



I 



VI.] THE FRENCH PLAY IN LONDON. 445 

verse and wondrous beauty of style of the Essay on 
Man would be misleading. Such terms can be pro- 
perly used only of verse and style of an altogether 
higher and more adequate kind, a verse and style 
like that of Dante, Shakspeare, or Milton. Pope's 
brilliant gift for versification is exercised within the 
limits of a form inadequate for true philosophic 
poetry, and by its very presence excluding it. M. 
Victor Hugo's brilliant gift for versification is exer- 
cised within the limits of a form inadequate for true 
tragic poetry, and by its very presence excluding it. 

But, if we are called upon to prove this from the 
poetry itself, instead of inferring it from the form, 
our task, in the case of Hernani, is really only too 
easy. What is the poetical value of this famous fifth 
act of Hernani ? What poetical truth, or verisimili- 
tude, or possibility has Euy Gomez, this chivalrous 
old Spanish grandee, this venerable nobleman, who, 
because he cannot marry his niece, presents himself 
to her and her husband upon their wedding night, 
and insists on the husband performing an old promise 
to commit suicide if summoned by Euy Gomez to do 
so ? Naturally the poor young couple raise difficulties, 
and the venerable nobleman keeps plying them with : 
Bois I Allons ! Le sepulcre est ouvert, et je ne puis 
attendre ! J'ai lidte ! II faut mourir ! This is a 
mere character of Surrey melodrama. And Hernani, 
who, when he is reminded that it is by his father's 
head that he has sworn to commit suicide, exclaims : 

"Mon pere ! mon pere ! — Ah ! j'en perdrai la raison ! " 

and who, when Dona Sol gets the poison away from 
him, entreats her to return it — 

"Par pitie, ce poison, 
Rends-le-moi ! Par I'amour, par notre ame immortelle !" 



446 THE FRENCH PLAY IN LONDON. [vi. 

because 

"he due a ma parole, et mon pere est la-haut !" 

The poetry ! says M. Sarcey, — and one thinks of the 
poetry of Lear 1 M. Sarcey must pardon me for 
saying that in 

" Le due a ma parole, et mon pere est la-liaut ! " 

we are not in the world of poetry at all, hardly even 
in the world of literature, unless it be the literature 
of Bomhastes Furioso. 

Our sense, then, for what is poetry and what is 
not, the attractiveness of the French plays and players 
must not make us unlearn. We may and must 
retain our old conviction of the fundamental in- 
sufficiency, both in substance and in form, of the 
rhymed tragedy of the French. We are to keep, 
too, what in the main has always been the English 
estimate of Moliere : that he is a man of creative and 
splendid power, a dramatist whose work is truly 
delightful, is edifying and immortal j but that even 
Moliere, in poetic drama, is hampered and has not 
full swing, and, in consequence, leaves us somewhat 
dissatisfied. Finally, we poor old people should 
pluck up courage to stand out yet, for the few years 
of life which yet remain to us, against that passing 
illusion of the confident young generation who are 
newly come out on the war-path, that M. Victor Hugo 
is a poet of the race and lineage of Shakspeare. 

What, now, are we to say of the prose drama of 
modern life, the drama of which the Sphinx and the 
Etranghre and the Hemi-Monde are types, and which 
was the most strongly attractive part, probably, of 
the feast offered to us by the French company? 
The first thing to be said of these pieces is that they 
are admirably acted. But then constantly, as I have 



VI.] THE FRENCH PLAY IN LONDON. 447 

already said, one has the feeling that the French 
actors are better than the pieces which they play. 
What are we to think of this modern prose drama in 
itself, the drama of M. Octave Feuillet, and M. 
Alexandre Dumas the younger, and M. Augier ? 
Some of the pieces composing it are better constructed 
and written than others, and much more effective. 
But this whole drama has one character common to 
it all. It may be best described as the theatre of the 
liomme sensuel moyen, the average sensual man, whose 
country is France, and whose city is Paris, and whose 
ideal is the free, gay, pleasurable life of Paris, — an 
ideal which our young literary generation, now out 
on the war-path here in England, seek to adopt from 
France, and which they busily preach and work for. 
Of course there is in Paris much life of another sort 
too, as there are in France many men of another type 
than that of the homme sensuel moyen. But for many 
reasons, which I need not enumerate here, the life of 
the free, confident, harmonious development of the 
senses, all round, has been able to establish itself 
among the French, and at Paris, as it has established 
itself nowhere else ; and the ideal life of Paris is this 
sort of life triumphant. And of this ideal the 
modern French drama, works like the Sphinx and 
the Etrangere and the Demi-Monde, are the expression. 
It is the drama, I say, this drama now in question, 
of the homme sensuel moyen, the average sensual man. 
It represents the life of the senses developing them- 
selves all round without misgiving ; a life confident, 
fair and free, with fireworks of fine emotions, grand 
passions, and devotedness, — or rather, perhaps, we 
should say dSvouement, — lighting it up when necessary. 
We in England have no modern drama at all. 
We have our Elizabethan drama. We have a drama 
of the last century and of the latter part of the 



448 THE FRENCH PLAY IN LONDON. [vi. 

century preceding, a drama which may be called our 
drama of the town, when the town was an entity 
powerful enough, because homogeneous enough, to 
evoke a drama embodying its notions of life. But 
we have no modern drama. Our vast society is not 
at present homogeneous enough for this, — not suffici- 
ently united, even any large portion of it, in a common 
view of life, a common ideal, capable of serving as 
basis for a modern English drama. We have appari- 
tions of poetic and romantic drama (as the French, 
too, have their charming Gringoire), which are always 
possible, because man has always in his nature the 
poetical fibre. Then we have numberless imitations 
and adaptations from the French. All of these are 
at the bottom fantastic. We may truly say of them, 
that " truth and sense and liberty are flown." And 
the reason is evident. They are pages out of a life 
which the ideal of the homme sensuel moyen rules, 
transferred to a life where this ideal, notwithstanding 
the fervid adhesion to it of our young generation, 
does not reign. For the attentive observer the 
result is a sense of incurable falsity in the piece as 
adapted. Let me give an example. Everybody 
remembers Pink Dominoes. The piece turns upon an 
incident possible and natural enough in the life of 
Paris. Transferred to the life of London the incident 
is altogether unreal, and its unreality makes the 
whole piece, in its English form, fantastic and absurd. 
Still that does not prevent such pieces, and the 
theatre generally, from now exercising upon us a 
great attraction. For we are at the end of a period, 
and have to deal with the facts and symptoms of a 
new period on which we are entering j and prominent 
among these fresh facts and symptoms is the irresisti- 
bility of the theatre. We know how the Elizabethan 
theatre had its cause in an ardent zest for life and 



VI.] THE FEENCH PLAY IN LONDON. 449 

living, a bold and large curiosity, a desire for a fuller, 
richer existence, pervading this nation at large, as 
they pervaded other nations, after the long mediaeval 
time of obstruction and restraint. But we know, 
too, how the great middle class of this nation, 
alarmed at grave symptoms which showed themselves 
in the new movement, drew back ; made choice for 
its spirit to live at one point, instead of living, or 
trying to live, at many ; entered, as I have so often 
said, the prison of Puritanism, and had the key 
turned upon its spirit there for two hundred years. 
Our middle class forsook the theatre. The English 
theatre reflected no more the aspiration of a great 
community for a fuller and richer sense of human 
existence. 

This theatre came afterwards, however, to reflect 
the aspirations of "the town." It developed a 
drama to suit these aspirations ; while it also brought 
back and re-exhibited the Elizabethan drama, so far 
as " the town " wanted it and liked it. Finally, as 
even " the town " ceased to be homogeneous, the 
theatre ceased to develop anything expressive. It 
still repeated what was old with more or less of talent. 
But the mass of our English community, the mass 
of the middle class, kept aloof from the whole thing. 

I remember how, happening to be at Shrewsbury, 
twenty years ago, and finding the whole Haymarket 
company acting there, I went to the theatre. Never 
was there such a scene of desolation. Scattered at 
very distant intervals through the boxes were about 
half-a-dozen chance-comers like myself; there were 
some soldiers and their friends in the pit, and a good 
many riff-raff in the upper gallery. The real towns- 
people, the people who carried forward the business 
and life of Shrewsbury, and who filled its churches 
and chapels on Sundays, were entirely absent. I 

VOL. IV. 2 (:; 



450 THE FRENCH PLAY IN LONDON. [vi. 

pitied the excellent Haymarket company j it must 
have been like acting to oneself upon an iceberg. 
Here one had a good example, — as I thought at the 
time, and as I have often thought since, — of the 
complete estrangement of the British middle class 
from the theatre. 

What is certain is, that a signal change is coming 
over us, and that it has already made great progress. 
It is said that there are now forty theatres in London. 
Even in Edinburgh, where in old times a single 
theatre maintained itself under protest, there are 
now, I believe, over half-a-dozen. The change is 
not due only to an increased liking in the upper class 
and in the working class for the theatre. Their 
liking for it has certainly increased, but this is not 
enough to account for the change. The attraction 
of the theatre begins to be felt again, after a long 
interval of insensibility, by the middle class also. 
Our French friends would say that this class, long 
petrified in a narrow Protestantism and in a perpetual 
reading of the Bible, is beginning at last to grow 
conscious of the horrible unnaturalness and ennui of 
its life, and is seeking to escape from it. Undoubt- 
edly the type of religion to which the British middle 
class has sacrificed the theatre, as it has sacrificed so 
much besides, is defective. But I prefer to say that 
this great class, having had the discipline of its 
religion, is now awakening to the sure truth that the 
human spirit cannot live aright if it lives at one 
point only, that it can and ought to live at several 
points at the same time. The human spirit has a 
vital need, as we say, for conduct and religion ; 
but it has the need also for expansion, for intellect 
and knowledge, for beauty, for social life and manners. 
The revelation of these additional needs brings the 
middle class to the theatre. 



vr.] THE FKENCH PLAY IN LONDON. 451 

The revelation was indispensable, the needs are 
real, the theatre is one of the mightiest means of 
satisfying them, and the theatre, therefore, is irresist- 
ible. That conclusion, at any rate, we may take for 
certain. We have to unlearn, therefore, our long 
disregard of the theatre ; we have to own that the 
theatre is irresistible. 

But I see our community turning to the theatre 
with eagerness, and finding the English theatre with- 
out organisation, or purpose, or dignity, and no 
modern English drama at all except a fantastical 
one. And then I see the French company from the 
chief theatre of Paris showing themselves to us in 
London, — a society of actors admirable in organisa- 
tion, purpose, and dignity, with a modern drama 
not fantastic at all, but corresponding with fidelity 
to a very palpable and powerful ideal, the ideal of 
the life of the homme sensiiel moyen in Paris, his 
beautiful city. I see in England a materialised 
upper class, sensible of the nullity of our own modern 
drama, impatient of the state of false constraint and 
of blank to which the Puritanism of our middle 
class has brought our stage and much of our life, 
delighting in such drama as the modern drama of 
Paris. I see the emancipated youth of both sexes 
delighting in it ; the new and clever newspapers, 
which push on the work of emancipation and serve 
as devoted missionaries of the gospel of the life of 
Paris and of the ideal of the average sensual man, 
delighting in it. And in this condition of affaii's I 
see the middle class beginning to arrive at the 
theatre again after an abstention of two centuries 
and more ; arriving eager and curious, but a little 
bewildered. 

Now, lest at this critical moment such drama as 
the Sphinx and the Etranghre and the Demi-Monde, 



452 THE FRENCH PLAY IN LONDON. [vi. 

positive as it is, and powerful as it is, and pushed as 
it is, and played with such prodigious care and talent, 
should too much rule the situation, let us take heart 
of grace and say, that as the right conclusion from 
the unparalleled success of the French company was 
not that we should reverse our old notions about 
the tragedy of M. Victor Hugo, or about French 
classic tragedy, or even about the poetic drama of 
the great Moliere, so neither is it the right conclusion 
from this success that we should be converted and 
become believers in the legitimacy of the life-ideal 
of the homme sensuel moyen, and in the sufficiency of 
his drama. This is not the occasion to deliver a 
moral discourse. It is enough to revert to what has 
been already said, and to remark that the French 
ideal and its theatre have the defect of leaving out 
too much of life, of treating the soul as if it lived at 
one point or group of points only, of ignoring other 
points, or groups of points, at which it must live as 
well. And herein the conception of life shown in 
this French ideal and in its drama really resembles, 
different as in other ways they are, the conception 
of life prevalent with the British middle class, and 
has the like kind of defect. Both conceptions of 
life are too narrow. Sooner or later if we adopt 
either, our soul and spirit are starved, and go amiss, 
and suffer. 

What then, finally, are we to learn from the 
marvellous success and attractiveness of the perform- 
ances at the Gaiety Theatre ? What is the con- 
sequence which it is right and rational for us to 
draw ? Surely it is this : " The theatre is irresistible; 
organise the theatre." Surely, if we wish to stand less 
in our own way, and to have clear notions of the 
consequences of things, it is to this conclusion that 
we should come. 



VI.] THE FEENCH PLAY IN LONDON. 453 

The performances of the French company show 
us plainly, I think, what is gained, — the theatre 
being admitted to be an irresistible need for civilised 
communities, — by organising the theatre. Some of 
the drama played by this company is, as we have 
seen, questionable. But, in the absence of an organi- 
sation such as that of this company, it would be 
played even yet more ; it would, with a still lower 
drama to accompany it, almost if not altogether 
reign; it would have far less correction and relief 
by better things. An older and better drama, 
containing many things of high merit, some things 
of surpassing merit, is kept before the public by 
means of this company, is given frequently, is given 
to perfection. Pieces of truth and beauty, which 
emerge here and there among the questionable pieces 
of the modern drama, get the benefit of this com- 
pany's skill, and are given to perfection. The 
questionable pieces themselves lose something of 
their unprofitableness and vice in their hands ; the 
acting carries us into the world of correct and pleas- 
ing art, if the piece does not. And the type of 
perfection fixed by these fine actors influences for good 
every actor in France. 

Moreover, the French company shows us not only 
what is gained by organising the theatre, but what 
is meant by organising it. The organisation in the 
example before us is simple and rational. We have 
a society of good actors, with a grant from the State 
on condition of their giving with frequency the 
famous and classic stage-plays of their nation, and 
with a commissioner of the State attached to the 
society and taking part in council with it. But the 
society is to all intents and purposes self-governing. 
And in connection with the society is the school of 
dramatic elocution of the Conservatoire, a school with 



454 THE FRENCH PLAY IN LONDON. [vi. 

the names of Eegnier, Monrose, Got and Delaunay 
on its roll of professors. 

The Society of the French Theatre dates from 
Louis the Fourteenth and from France's great century. 
It has, therefore, traditions, effect, consistency, and a 
place in the public esteem, which are not to be won 
in a day. But its organisation is such as a judicious 
man, desiring the results which in France have been 
by this time won, would naturally have devised; 
and it is such as a judicious man, desiring in another 
country to secure like results, would naturally imitate. 
. We have in England everything to make us dis- 
satisfied with the chaotic and ineffective condition 
into which our theatre has fallen. We have the 
remembrance of better things in the past, and the 
elements for better things in the future. We have 
a splendid national drama of the Elizabethan age, 
and a later drama of " the town " which has no lack 
of pieces conspicuous by their stage-qualities, their 
vivacity and their talent, and interesting by their 
pictures of manners. We have had great actors. 
We have good actors not a few at the present 
moment. But we have been unlucky, as we so often 
are^ in the work of organisation. In the essay at 
organisation which in the patent theatres, with their 
exclusive privilege of acting Shakspeare, we formerly 
had, we find by no means an example, such as we 
have in the constitution of the French Theatre, of 
what a judicious man, seeking the good of the drama 
and of the public, would naturally devise. We find 
rather such a machinery as might be devised by a 
man prone to stand in his own way, a man devoid 
of clear notions of the consequences of things. It i 
was inevitable that the patent theatres should pro- il 
voke discontent and attack. They were attacked, 
and their privilege fell. Still, to this essay, however 



VI.] THE FRENCH PLAY IN LONDON. 455 

imperfect, of a public organisation for the English 
theatre, our stage owes the days of power and 
greatness which it has enjoyed. So far as we have 
had a school of great actors, so far as our stage has 
had tradition, effect, consistency, and a hold on public 
esteem, it had them under the system of the pri- 
vileged theatres. The system had its faults, and 
was abandoned; but then, instead of devising a 
better plan of public organisation for the English 
theatre, we gladly took refuge in our favourite doc- 
trines of the mischief of State interference, of the 
blessedness of leaving every man free to do as he 
likes, of the impertinence of presuming to check any 
man's natural taste for the bathos and pressing him 
to relish the sublime. We left the English theatre 
to take its chance. Its present impotence is the 
result. 

It seems to me that every one of us is concerned 
to find a remedy for this melancholy state of things ; 
and that the pleasure we have had in the visit of the 
French company is barren, unless it leaves us with 
the impulse to mend the condition of our theatre, 
and with the lesson how alone it can be rationally 
attempted. " Forget," — can we not hear these fine 
artists saying in an undertone to us, amidst their 
graceful compliments of adieu 1 — " forget your clap- 
trap, and believe that the State, the nation in its 
collective and corporate character, does well to 
concern itself about an influence so important to 
national life and manners as the theatre. Form a 
company out of the materials ready to your hand in 
your many good actors or actors of promise. Give 
them a theatre at the West End. Let them have a 
grant from your Science and Art Department; let 
some intelligent and accomplished man, like our 
friend Mr. Pigott, your present Examiner of Plays, 



456 THE FKENCH PLAY IN LONDON. [vi. 

be joined to them as Commissioner from the Depart- 
ment, to see that the conditions of the grant are 
observed. Let the conditions of the grant be that a 
repertory is agreed upon, taken out of the works of 
Shakspeare and out of the volumes of the Modern 
British Drama, and that pieces from this repertory- 
are played a certain number of times in each season ; 
as to new pieces, let your company use its discretion. 
Let a school of dramatic elocution and declamation 
be instituted in connection with your company. It 
may surprise you to hear that elocution and declama- 
tion are things to be taught and learnt, and do not 
come by nature ; but it is so. Your best and most 
serious actors" (this is added with a smile) "would 
have been better, if in their youth they had learnt 
elocution. These recommendations, you may think, 
are not very much; but, as your divine William 
says, they are enough ; they will serve. Try them. 
When your institution in the West of London has 
become a success, plant a second of like kind in the 
East. The people will have the theatre j then make 
it a good one. Let your two or three chief provincial 
towns institute, with municipal subsidy and co-opera- 
tion, theatres such as you institute in the metropolis 
with State subsidy and co-operation. So you will 
restore the English theatre. And then a modern 
drama of your own will also, probably, spring up 
amongst you, and you will not have to come to us 
for pieces like Pink Dominoes." 

No, and we will hope, too, that the modern 
English drama, when it comes, may be something 
different from even the Sphinx and the Demi-Monde. 
For my part, I have all confidence, that if it ever 
does come, it will be different and better. But let 
us not say a word to wound the feelings of those 
who have given us so much pleasure, and who leave 



VI.] THE FRENCH PLAY IN LONDON. 457 

to US as a parting legacy such excellent advice. For 
excellent advice it is, and everything we saw these 
artists say and do upon the Gaiety stage inculcates it 
for us, whether they exactly formulated it in words 
or no. And still, even now that they are gone, when 
I pass along the Strand and come opposite to the 
Gaiety Theatre, I see a fugitive vision of delicate 
features under a shower of hair and a cloud of lace, 
and hear the voice of Mdlle. Sarah Bernhardt saying 
in its most caressing tones to the Londoners : " The 
theatre is irresistible ; organise the theatre !" 



VII. 

COPYEIGHT. 

George Sand died in 1876, and her publisher, 
Michel L6vy, died the year before, in 1875. In 
May 1875, just after Michel Levy's death, Madame 
Sand wrote a letter in which she renders a tribute of 
praise and gratitude to the memory of that enter- 
prising, sagacious, and successful man. She describes 
his character, his habits, his treatment of his authors, 
his way of doing business, his conception of the 
book -trade and of its prospects. It was by this 
conception and by the line which he boldly took in 
pursuance of it that he was original and remarkable ; 
a main creator, says Madame Sand, of our new modus 
Vivendi in literature j one whose disappearance is not 
the disappearance of a rich man merely, but of an 
intellectual force. 

The industrial and literary revolution, for which 
Michel Levy did so much, may be summed up in two 
words : cheap books. But by cheap books we are not 
to understand the hideous and ignoble things with 
which, under his name, England and America have 
made us familiar. Cheap books in the revolution of 
Michel Levy, were books in the format Charpentier or 
the format Ldvy, books in duodecimo instead of octavo; 
and costing, in general, two -and -sixpence or three 



VII.] COPYRIGHT. 459 

shillings a volume instead of eight shillings or nine 
shillings. But they were still books of such an 
outward form and fashion as to satisfy a decent 
taste, not to revolt it; books shapely, well printed, 
well margined ; agreeable to look upon and clear to 
read. 

Such as it was, however, the cheapening of their 
books threw, at first, French authors into alarm. 
They thought that it threatened their interests. " I 
remember the time, not so very long ago," says 
Madame Sand, " when we replied to the publishers 
who were demonstrating to us what the results of 
the future would be : ' Yes, if you succeed, it will be 
all very well ; but if you fail, if, after an immense 
issue of books, you do not diffuse the taste for 
reading, then you are lost, and we along with you.' 
And I urged upon Michel Levy," she continues, 
"this objection among others, that frivolous or 
unhealthy books attracted the masses, to the exclu- 
sion of works which are useful and conscientious. 
He replied to me with that practical intelligence 
which he possessed in so eminent a degree : ' Possi- 
bly, and even probably, it may be so at first. But 
consider this : that the reading of bad books has 
inevitably one good result. It inspires a man with 
the curiosity to read, it gives him the habit of reading, 
and the habit becomes a necessity. I intend, that, 
before ten years are over, people shall ask for their 
book as impatiently as if it were a question of dinner 
when one is hungry. Food and books, we have to 
create a state of things when both shall alike be felt 
as needs ; and you will confess then, you writers and 
artists, that we have solved your problem : Man does 
not live by bread alone.'" 

The ten years were not ended before Michel Levy's 
authors had to own, says Madame Sand, that their 



460 COPYRIGHT. [vii. 

publisher was right. Madame Sand adds that this 
led her to reflect on the value of the mediocre in art 
and literature. Illustrious friends and fellow- authors 
of hers had been in despair at seeing works of the 
third order obtain a success far beyond any that they 
could expect for their own works, and they were 
disposed to think that with cheap books an era of 
literary decadence was opening. You are misled, 
she tells them, by the passing disturbance which 
important innovations always create at first. It was 
thought, when railways came, that we had seen the 
last of conveyance by horses and carriages, and that 
the providers of it must all be ruined ; but it turns 
out that railways have created a business for horses 
and carriages greater than there ever was before. In 
the same way, the abundant consumption of middling 
literature has stimulated the appetite for trying to 
know and to judge books. Second-rate, commonplace 
literature is what the ignorant require for catching 
the first desire for books, the first gleam of light; 
the day will presently dawn for them as it does for 
the child, who by degrees, as he learns to read, learns 
to understand also ; and, in fifty years from this time, 
the bad and the middling in literature will be unable 
to find a publisher, because they will be unable to 
find a market. 

So prophesied George Sand, and the prophecy was 
certainly a bold one. May we really hope, that 
towards the year 1930 the bad and the middling in 
literature will, either in Paris or in London, be 
unable to find a publisher because it will be unable 
to find a market 1 Let us all do our best to bring 
about such a consummation, without, however, too 
confidently counting upon it. 

But that on which I at present wish to dwell, in 
this relation by Madame Sand of her debate with her 



vil] copyright. 461 

energetic publisher and of her own reflections on it, 
is the view presented of the book-trade and of its 
future. That view I believe to be in the main sound, 
and to show the course which things do naturally and 
properly tend to take, in England as well as in France. 
I do not say that I quite adopt the theory ofi'ered 
by Michel L6vy, and accepted by George Sand, to 
explain the course which things are thus taking. I 
do not think it safe to say, that the consumption of 
the bad and middling in literature does of itself 
necessarily engender a taste for the good, and that 
out of the multiplication of second-rate books for the 
million the multiplication of first-rate books does as 
a natural consequence spring. But the facts them- 
selves, I think, are as Michel L6vy laid them down, 
though one may dispute his explanation and filiation 
for the facts. It is a fact that there is a need for 
cheaper books, and that authors and publishers may 
comply with it and yet not be losers. It is a fact 
that the masses, when they first take to reading, will 
probably read a good deal of rubbish, and yet that 
the victory will be with good books in the end. In 
part we can see that this is the course which things 
are actually taking; in part we can predict, from 
knowing the deepest and strongest instincts which 
govern mankind in its development, — the instinct of 
expansion, the instinct of self-preservation, — that it 
is the course which things will take in the future. 

The practical mode by which Michel L^vy 
revolutionised the book-trade was this. He brought 
out in the format Ldvy, at three francs or three francs 
and a half a volume, new works such as, for example, 
those of George Sand herself, which formerly would 
have come out at seven francs and a half a volume. 
Nay, such works would very often have taken two 
volumes, costing fifteen francs, to give no more than 



462 COPYEIGHT. [VII, 

what is given in one volume of the format Levy for 
three francs and a half. New books in octavo were 
cheapened likewise. The two octavo volumes, in 
French, of Prince Metternich's Memoirs and Corre- 
spondence, which have lately come out in Paris, cost 
but eighteen francs. The two octavo volumes of the 
English version of Prince Metternich's Memoirs and 
Correspondence cost thirty -six shillings. But in 
general we may say that the important reform 
accomplished in the French book-trade by Michel 
L6vy and by other publishers of like mind with him 
was this : to give to the public, in the format L4vy, 
new books at half-a-crown or three shillings, instead 
of at from six to twelve shillings. 

And now to apply this, where it seems to me to 
be of very useful application, to various points which 
emerge in discussing the copyright of English authors 
and the conditions of the English book -trade. I 
leave on one side all questions of copyright in acted 
plays, music, and pictures. I confine myself to 
copyright in books, and to the chief questions raised 
on it. My point of view will be neither an author's 
point of view, nor a publisher's point of view, nor 
yet the point of view of one contending against 
authors or publishers, but the point of view of one 
whose sole wish is to let things appear to him fairly 
and naturally, and as they really are. 

A Eoyal Commission on Copyright has lately been 
sitting, and has made its report. "We have arrived 
at a conclusion," the report declares, " that copyright 
should continue to be treated by law as a proprietary 
right, and that it is not expedient to substitute for this 
a right to a royalty, or any other of a similar kind." 

This opening sentence of the report refers to a 
great battle. The Commissioners have come, they 



VII.] COPYEIGHT. 463 

say, to a conclusion that " coprriglit should continue 
to be treated as 2i proprietary right.'' Here has been 
the point of conflict, — as to the proprietary right of 
the author, as to his right of property in his produc- 
tion. Xever perhaps do men show themselves so 
earnest, so pertinacious, so untiringly ingenious, as 
when they have under discussion the right and idea 
of property. One is reminded of Pascal : " This dog 
is rrdne^ said these poor children ; behold my place in 
the sun ! " It is disputed whether an author has 
the right of property in his production after he has 
once published it. Professor Huxley and ]\Ii\ Herbert 
Spencer contended with indefatigable ingenuity before 
the Royal Commission on Copyright that he has ; 
and Mr. Farrer, of the Board of Trade, and Sir Louis 
Mallet maintained resolutely that he has not. There 
is no question that a man can have a right of pro- 
perty in his productions so far as the law may choose 
to create one for him. Eut the first point at issue 
between many distinguished and powerful disputants 
is, whether he has a natural right. 

Now, for me the matter is simplified by my 
believing that men, if they go down into their own 
minds and deal quite freely with their o^vn conscious- 
ness, will find that they have not any natural rights 
at all. And as it so often happens with a difficult 
matter of dispute, so it happens here ; the difficulty, 
the embarrassment, the need for drawing subtle 
distinctions and for devising subtle means of escape 
from them, when the right of property is under 
discussion, arises from one's having first built up the 
idea of natui-al right as a wall to run one's head 
against. An author has no natural right to a pro- 
perty in his production. But then neither has he a 
natural right to anything whatever which he may 
produce or acquire. 



464 COPYRIGHT. [vii. 

What is true is, that a man has a strong instinct 
making him seek to possess what he has produced or 
acquired, to have it at his own disposal; that he 
finds pleasure in so having it, and finds profit. The 
instinct is natural and salutary, although it may be 
over-stimulated and indulged to excess. One of the 
first objects of men, in combining themselves in 
society, has been to afford to the individual, in his 
pursuit of this instinct, the sanction and assistance 
of the laws, so far as may be consistent with the 
general advantage of the community. 

The author, like other people, seeks the pleasure 
and the profit of having at his own disposal what he 
produces. Literary production, wherever it is sound, 
is its own exceeding great reward. But that does 
not destroy or diminish the author's desire and 
claim to be allowed to have at his disposal, like 
other people, that which he produces, and to be free 
to turn it to account. It happens that the thing 
which he produces is a thing hard for him to keep 
at his own disposal, easy for other people to appro- 
priate. But then, on the other hand, he is an 
interesting producer, giving often a great deal of 
pleasure by what he produces, and not provoking 
Nemesis by any huge and immoderate profits on his 
production, even when it is suffered to be at his own 
disposal. 

So society has taken the author under its pro- 
tection, and has sanctioned, to a certain extent, his 
property in his work, and enabled him to have it at 
his own disposal In England our laws give him 
the property in his work for forty-two years, or for 
his own life and seven years afterwards, whichever 
period is longest. In France, the law gives him the 
property in his work for his own life, and his widow's 
life, and for twenty years afterwards if he leave 



VII.] COPYEIGHT. . 465 

children ; for ten years if he have other heirs. In 
Germany, the property in his work is for his life and 
thirty years afterwards. In Italy, for his Hfe and 
forty years afterwards, with a further period during 
which a royalty has to be paid upon it to his heirs. 
In the United States, the author's property in his 
work is guaranteed for twenty- eight years from 
publication, with the right of renewal to himself, his 
wife, or his children, for fourteen years more. And 
this, though the author's production is a thing con- 
fessedly difficult to protect, and easy to appropriate. 
But it is possible to protect it ; and so the author is 
suffered to enjoy the property in his production, to 
have it at his own disposal. 

But is the author's production really property, ask 
some people ; has he any natural right to it 1 JVIr. 
Farrer, like so many other people, seems to be 
haunted by a metaphysical conception of joroperfy in 
itself, — a conception distinguishing between certain 
things, as belonging to the class of that which is 
property in itself, and certain other things, as 
belonging to the class of that which is not property 
in itself. Mr. Farrer's dog, his 2)lace in the sun at 
Abinger, are of the class of property in itself; his 
booh, if he produces one, is of the class of that which 
is not property in itself. Sir Louis Mallet is in the 
same order of ideas, when he insists that " property 
arises from limitation of supply." Property accord- 
ing to its essential nature, Sir Louis Mallet means, 
property in itself. 

Let us beware of this metaphysical phantom of 
property in itself, which, like other metaphysical 
phantoms, is hollow and leads us to delusion. 
Property is the creation of law. It is effect given, 
by society and its laws, to that natural instinct in 
man which makes him seek to enjoy ownership in 

VOL. IV. 2 H 



466 COPYEIGHT. [vii. 

what he produces, acquires, or has. The effect is 
given because the instinct is natural, and because 
society, which makes the laws, is itself composed of 
men who feel the instinct. The instinct is natural, 
and in general society will comply with it. But 
there are certain cases in which society will not 
comply with it, or will comply with it in a very 
limited degree only. And what has determined 
society, in these cases, to refuse or greatly limit its 
compliance with the instinct of ownership, is the 
difficulty of giving effect to it, the disadvantage of 
trying to give effect to it in spite of such difficulty. 

There is no property, people often say, in ideas 
uttered in conversation, in spoken words ; and it is 
inferred that there ought to be no property in ideas 
and words when they are embodied in a book. But 
why is there no property in ideas uttered in conver- 
sation, and in spoken words, while there is property 
in ideas and words when they come in a book 1 A 
brilliant talker may very well have the instinct of 
ownership in his good sayings, and all the more if 
he must and can only talk them and not write them. 
He might be glad of power to prevent the appropria- 
tion of them by other people, to fix the conditions 
on which alone the appropriation should be allowed, 
and to derive profit from allowing it. Society, again, 
may well feel sympathy with his instinct of ownership, 
feel a disposition to assist and favour a production 
which gives it so much pleasure. But we are met 
by the difficulty, the insuperable difficulty, of giving 
effect to the producer's, instinct of ownership in this 
case, of securing to him the disposal of his spoken 
ideas and words. Accordingly, effect is not given to 
it, and in such spoken ideas and words there is no 
property. 

In other cases there is a partial and limited pro- 



VII.] COPYRIGHT. 467 

perty given, and from the same reason, — from the 
difficulty of giving complete ownership. Game is an 
instance in point. A man breeds pheasants, rears 
them and feeds them, and he has a natural instinct 
to keep them in his entire possession, and at his own 
disposal. But the law will allow but a partial satis- 
faction to this instinct of his, and the moment his 
pheasants leave his land they may be taken by the 
person to whose ground they go. Of his chickens, 
meanwhile, a man retains ownership, even though 
they may pass over to his neighbour's field. Yet 
very likely he has bought the eggs of the pheasants 
and of the chickens alike, reared them both, fed 
them both, and feels the instinct and desire to claim 
them both alike as his property. But the law gives 
eff'ect to this desire fully as regards the chickens, 
only partially as regards the pheasants. Why ? 
Because of the far greater difficulty of giving full 
eff'ect to it as regards the pheasants, and of the 
disadvantage which may arise from persisting in 
giving eff'ect to it in spite of the difficulty. The law 
denies to a man the complete ownership of his 
pheasants, because they are difficult to keep at his 
own disposal, easy for other people to appropriate. 
And other people are more prone to appropriate them 
than the chickens, and more inclined to dispute his 
ownership of them, because of this very difficulty in 
maintaining it and facility in violating it Even the 
partial ownership of his pheasants which the law 
does allow to a man, it has to fortify by special 
measures for its support; by making trespass in 
pursuit of game a different and more serious off'ence 
than common trespass. To gratify his instinct of 
ownership fully, to let a man have his pheasants at 
his entire disposal, the law would have to take more 
stringent and exceptional measures in his favour than 



468 COPYRIGHT. [vii. 

it takes now ; and this every one feels to be out of 
the question. The law will certainly not do more 
for him than it does now ; the only question is, 
whether it ought to do so much. To give even as 
much ownership in game as a man enjoys now, 
special measures in his favour are required, because 
his ownership meets with such great natural diffi- 
culties. So great are these difficulties, that the 
special measures to counteract them are far less 
likely to be reinforced than to be withdrawn. 

And now to apply this to the question of copy- 
right. The instinct of an author to desire ownership 
in his production, and advantage from that ownership, 
is natural. The author is an interesting person, and 
society may, and probably will, be even more ready, 
rather than less ready, to aid in giving effect to the 
instinct in his case than in the case of others, if it 
can be done without grave inconvenience. But there 
is difficulty in securing his ownership. The author's 
production is a production difficult to keep at his own 
disposal, easy for others to appropriate. His claim 
to some benefit of ownership, however, is generally 
admitted, and he has ownership given to him for a 
limited term of years. He finds a publisher, and in 
concert with him he exercises his ownership ; and the 
result in England of this concert between author and 
publisher is, that English books are exceedingly dear. 
A strong desire for cheaper books begins to be felt. 
Here is the real importance of Sir Louis Mallet's 
contention and of Mr. Farrer's. " To Englishmen," 
says Sir Louis Mallet, " easy access to the contem- 
porary literature of their own language is only 
possible on the condition of exile; England is the 
only country in which English books are scarce or 
dear." " Nothing can be more intolerable," says Mr. 
Farrer, " than a system of copyright-law under which 



vii.] COPYEIGHT. 469 

the inhabitants of the mother-country in which the 
books are produced are the only persons in the world 
who are prevented from obtaining cheap editions of 
them." An impatience, to which Mr. Farrer and Sir 
Louis Mallet here give utterance, an impatience at 
the dearness of English books, a desire to have them 
cheaper, has therefore to be added to the original 
diflSculty of securing the author's ownership in a 
kind of production which is by nature hard to keep 
at his disposal, easy for others to appropriate. An 
increased difficulty of securing his ownership is the 
result. 

The ingenious reasoning of many advocates of the 
rights of authors, and even the line taken by Mr. 
Froude in that instructive and interesting article on 
Copyright which he published in the Edinburgh 
Review, fail, it seems to me, to touch the point where 
the strength of their adversaries' case lies. Like 
their adversaries, they lodge themselves, stark and 
stiflf, in the idea of "property in itself." Only, for 
them, an author's work is "property in itself" just 
as much as his horse or his field; while, for their 
adversaries, his horse or his field is "property in 
itself," but his work is not. Let us grant that the 
adversaries are wrong, and that an author's work is 
"property in itself" (whatever that may mean), just 
as much as his horse or his field. He has at any 
rate, we will suppose, the same instinct making him 
seek to have the ownership and profit of his work, as 
to have the ownership and profit of his horse or field. 
But what makes the law give him such full owner- 
ship as it does of his horse or field is not that the 
horse or field is "property in itself;" it is, that to 
comply with his natural desire, and to secure him in 
his ownership, is in the case of the horse or field 
comparatively easy. And what makes the law give 



470 COPYKIGHT. [VII. 

him a more limited ownership of his literary work is 
not that this work fails to prove its claim to be con- 
sidered "property in itself;" it is that, in the case of 
his literary work, to secure him in his ownership is 
much more difficult. And suppose we add sufficiently 
to the difficulty by the rise of a general impatience 
at the dearness of new books in England ; of general 
irritation at seeing that a work like Lord Macaulay's 
Life comes out at thirty -six shillings in England, 
while in France it would come out at eighteen francs, 
that a new novel by George Eliot costs a guinea and 
a half, while a new novel by George Sand costs three 
shillings ; of general complaints that " the inhabitants 
of the mother-country in which the books are pro- 
duced are the only persons in the world who are 
prevented from obtaining cheap editions of them," 
— suppose we add, I say, to the difficulty by all this, 
and you endanger the retention of even the right of 
ownership which the law secures to the author now. 
The advantage of complying with the author's instinct 
of ownership might be outweighed by the disadvan- 
tage of complying with it under such accumulated and 
immense difficulty. 

But yet to secure, so far as without intolerable 
inconvenience it can be done, the benefits of owner- 
ship in his production to the author, every one, or 
almost every one, professes to desire. And in 
general, those who profess to desire this do really 
mean, I think, what they say ; and there is no dis- 
position in their minds to put the author off with 
benefits which are illusory. But Mr. Farrer and 
others propose — no doubt without intending the poor 
author any harm — a mode of benefit to him from his 
productions which does seem quite illusory. The 
proposal is to set all the world free to print and sell 
his work as soon as it appears, on condition of pay- 



VII.] COPYRIGHT. 471 

ing him a royalty of ten per cent. But both authors 
and publishers, and all who have the most experience 
in the matter and the nearest interest, unite in saying 
that the author's benefit under this plan would be 
precarious and illusory. The poor man pursuing his 
ten per cent over Great Britain and Ireland would be 
pitiable enough. But what shall we say of him pur- 
suing his ten per cent over all the British Dominions 1 
What shall we say of him pursuing it, under an 
international copyright on this plan, between all 
English-speaking people over the United States of 
America 1 There are many objections to this plan of 
a royalty ; but the decisive objection is, that whereas 
every one professes the wish not to take away from 
the author all substantial benefit from the sale of his 
work, this plan, in the opinion of those best able to 
judge, would take it away entirely. 

The Eoyal Commission reported against this plan 
of a royalty, and in favour of continuing the present 
plan of securing by law to the author an ownership 
in his work for a limited term of years. The Com- 
missioners have proposed what would, in my opinion, 
be a very great improvement upon the present 
arrangement. Instead of a copyright for forty-two 
years, or for life and seven years after, whichever 
period is longest, they propose to give, as in Germany, 
a copyright for the author's life and for thirty years 
after. But the principle is the same as in the 
arrangement of 1842, and there is no danger at 
present, in spite of Mr. Farrer's efforts, of the prin- 
ciple being departed from. Mr. Froude says truly 
that the course recommended by Mr. Farrer — the 
withdrawal from the author, in effect, of the benefits 
of ownership in his work — is a course which every 
single person practically connected with literature 
consents in condemning. He says truly that there is 



472 COPYKIGHT. [vii. 

no agitation for it. He says truly that the press is 
silent about it, and that no complaints are heard from 
the public. 

And yet the natural facts, in England as in 
France, are as Michel L6vy states them in his con- 
versation Avith Madame Sand : there is a need for 
cheaper books ; the need will have to be satisfied, 
and it may be satisfied without loss to either author 
or publisher. What gives gravity to the dissatisfac- 
tion of Sir Louis Mallet and of Mr. Farrer with the 
actual course of the book-trade in England is, that 
the course of our book-trade goes counter to those 
natural facts. Sooner or later it will have to adjust 
itself to them, or there will be an explosion of dis- 
content likely enough to sweep away copyright, and 
to destroy the author's benefit from his work by 
reducing it to some such illusory benefit as that 
offered by the royalty plan of Mr. Farrer. As our 
nation grows more civilised, as a real love of reading 
comes to prevail more widely, the system which keeps 
up the present exorbitant price of new books in 
England, the system of lending-libraries from which 
books are hired, will be seen to be, as it is, eccentric, 
artificial, and unsatisfactory in the highest degree. 
It is a machinery for the multiplication and protection 
of bad literature, and for keeping good books dear. 
In general, a book which is worth a man's reading is 
worth his possessing. The plan of having one's 
books from a lending-library leads to reading imper- 
fectly and without discrimination, to glancing at 
books and not going through them, or rather to 
going through, for the most part, a quantity of the 
least profitable sort of books only, — novels, — and of 
but glancing at whatever is more serious. Every 
genuine reader will feel that the book he cares to 
read he cares to possess, and the number of genuine 



VII.] COPYEIGHT. 473 

readers amongst us, in spite of all our shortcomings, 
is on the increase. 

Mr. Froude, indeed, says, having the experience of 
an editor's shelves before his eyes, that instead of 
desiring the possession of more books than one has, 
one might rather desire not to possess half of those 
which one has now. But the books he means are 
just those which a genuine reader would never think 
of buying, and which yet are shot upon us now in 
profusion by the lending-libraries. Mr. Froude says, 
again, that new books are not the best books, and 
that old books, which are best, are to be bought 
cheap. True, old books of surpassing value are to be 
bought cheap ; but there are good new books, too, 
and good new books have a stimulus and an interest 
peculiar to themselves, and the reader will not be 
content to forego them. Mr. Herbert Spencer may 
tell him, that to desire the possession of good new 
books, when he is not rich, is merely the common 
case of the poor desiring to possess what is accessible 
to the rich only ; that it is as if he wanted fine 
horses, and the best champagne, and hothouse flowers, 
and strawberries at Christmas. But the answer is 
that the good new books, unlike the horses and 
champagne, may be brought within his reach without 
loss to the vendor, and that it is only the eccentric, 
artificial, and highly unsatisfactory system of our 
book-trade which prevents it. 

The three-shilling book is our great want, — the 
book at three shillings or half-a-crown, like the books 
of the format Levy, shapely and seemly, and as 
acceptable to the eye as the far dearer books which 
we have now. The price proposed will perfectly 
allow of this. The French books of the format Levy, 
and the French books in octavo, are as shapely and 
seemly, as acceptable to the eye, as the correspond- 



474 COPYRIGHT. [vii, 

ing English books at double and treble their price. 
The two octavo volumes of Madame de R6musat's 
Memoirs, in French, cost but twelve shillings, yet they 
make a handsomer book than the two octavo volumes 
of the same work in English, which cost thirty-two. 
A cheap literature, hideous and ignoble of aspect, like 
the tawdry novels which flare in the book-shelves of 
our railway stations, and which seem designed, as so 
much else that is produced for the use of our middle 
class seems designed, for people with a low standard 
of life, is not what is wanted. A sense of beauty 
and. fitness ought to be satisfied in the form and 
aspect of the books we read, as well as by their con- 
tents. To have the contents ofi'ered one for next to 
nothing, but in hideous and ignoble form and aspect, 
is not what one desires. A man would willingly pay 
higher, but in the measure of his means, for what he 
values, in order to have it in worthy form. But our 
present prices are prohibitive. The taste for beauti- 
ful books is a charming and humane taste for a rich 
man, though really, as has been already said, our 
ordinary dear books gratify this taste not a bit better 
than the French cheaper ones. However, the taste 
for beautiful books requires expense, no doubt, to 
be fully gratified j and in large paper copies and 
exquisite bindings the rich man may gratify it still, 
as he still gratifies it in France, even when we have 
reformed our book-trade as the French have reformed 
theirs. For reforming ours, the signal innovation 
necessary, as in France, is the three -shilling book ; 
although, of course, the price of our new works in 
octavo at sixteen or eighteen shillings a volume would 
also have to be reduced in proportion. If nothing of 
this kind is done, if the system of our book -trade 
remains as it is, dissatisfaction, not loud and active 
at present, — I grant that to Mr. Froude, — will grow 



VII.] COPYEIGHT. 475 

and stir more and more, and will certainly end by 
menacing, in spite of whatever conclusion the Royal 
Commission may now adopt and proclaim, the pro- 
prietary right of the author. 

The doctrine of M. Michel L6vy respecting the 
book-trade, and what I have been now saying about 
our book -trade at home, have their application in 
America also, and I must end with a few words con- 
cerning the book-trade of the United States. Indeed, 
one is invited by the Americans themselves to do so, 
for the famous publishers in New York, the Messrs. 
Harper, have addressed to the authors and publishers 
of this country a proposal for an International 
Conference on Copyright. Mr. Conant, who is 
understood to be connected with the publishing 
house of the Messrs. Harper, has given in an English 
magazine an exposition of American opinion on the 
matter; and an Englishman of legal training and 
great acuteness, who signs himself "C," but whom 
we may, I believe, without indiscretion, name as Mr. 
Leonard Courtney, has commented on Mr. Conant's 
exposition. 

The Americans, as is well known, have at present 
(to quote the words of an American, Mr. George 
Putnam, who has published on this question of 
copyright a pamphlet very temperate, and, in general, 
very judicious) "no regulation to prevent the use, 
without remuneration, of the literary property of 
foreign authors." Mr. Putnam adds : " The United 
States is, therefore, at present the only country, itself 
possessing a literature of importance, and making a 
large use of the literature of the world, which has 
done nothing to recognise and protect by law the 
rights of foreign authors of whose property it is 
enjoying the benefit, or to obtain a similar recognition 
and protection for its own authors abroad." 



476 COPYEIGHT. [VII. 

The Americans, some of them, as is also well 
known, defend this state of things by adopting the 
cry of "free books for free men." A Conference 
held at Philadelphia, in 1872, passed resolutions 
declaring that " thought, when given to the world, is, 
as light, free to all;" and, moreover, that "the good 
of our whole people, and the safety of our republican 
institutions, demand that books shall not be made too 
costly for the multitude by giving the power to foreign 
authors to fix their price here as well as abroad." 

Mr. Conant, in his representation to the English 
public of the case of the American public, adopts these 
Philadelphian ideas in principle. But he maintains 
that in practice the American publishers have gener- 
ously waived their right to act on them, and he 
carries the war into the enemy's country. He says 
for himself and his countrymen: "We are keenly 
alive to the necessity of the general diffusion of 
intelligence. Upon it depends the perpetuity of our 
republican form of government. Europe is constantly 
pouring upon our shores a mighty deluge of ignorance 
and superstition. We welcome here the poor, the 
outcasts of every land. There is a widespread feel- 
ing that the Old World, which contributes this mass 
of ignorance and superstition to our population, 
should also contribute to the alleviation of the result- 
ing ills." Mr. Conant alleges that the concession in 
past times of a copyright to English authors " would 
have retarded the progress of American culture at 
least half a century, and delayed that widespread 
intellectual development from which English authors 
reap so large a benefit." 

And yet, nevertheless, says this good Mr. Conant, 
"the course of American publishers, pursued for 
many years, towards foreign men of letters, shows 
that they have no disposition to take advantage of 



vii.] COPYKIGHT. 477 

the absence of international copyright." He declares: 
" As for English authors, they have already learned 
that their interests are quite safe in the hands of 
* Yankee pirates,' as some of your writers still per- 
sist in calling the men who for years have conducted 
the puhliahing business of this country with the most 
scrupulous regard for the rights of foreign authors. 
Few English people, I think, have any notion of the 
amount of money paid to British authors by American 
publishers. Those authors whose books have been 
reprinted hero without compensation to the author, 
may rest assured that this was owing to the fact that 
the sale was not remunerative here, and that inter- 
national copyright Mall not make it larger." On the 
other hand: "While for twenty-five years past 
British authors have enjoyed all the material advan- 
tages of copyright in this country, American books 
have been reprinted in ]*'ngland by the thousand, 
without compensation to the authors." And there- 
fore, adds Mr. Oonant, " in view of these facts, an 
American may be pardoned for indulging in a quiet 
laugh at the lofty tone which the Eoyal Commission- 
ers on Copyright assume in their solemn arraignment 
of the United States for refusing to grant protection 
to English authors." 

And so the tables are fairly turned upon us. Not 
only have English authors no reason to comi)lain of 
America, but American authors have great reason to 
complain of England. 

An English author, as ho reads Mr. Conant, will 
by turns bo inclined to laugh and to be indignant. 
Mr. Leonard Courtney handles Mr. Conant's state- 
ment very scornfully and severely. For myself, I am 
of a gentle disposition, and I am disposed, in reading 
Mr. Conant in Macmillan's Magazine, to ask .him 
before all things Figaro's question : — Qui est-ce qyHon 



478 COPYRIGHT. [vii. 

trompe id ? — Who is it that is being taken in here 1 
At the Philadelphia Conference Mr. Conant's state- 
ment would have been quite in place ; but why 
he should address it to the British public passes my 
comprehension. Our British middle class, no doubt, 
like the great middle -class public of the United 
States, likes to have its defective practice covered by 
an exhibition of fine sentiments. But it is our own 
defective practice that we seek to cover by the 
exhibition of fine sentiments ; — as, for instance, 
when we left Denmark in the lurch after all our 
admonitions and threatenings to Germany, we assured 
one another that the whole world admired our moral 
attitude. But it gives us no pleasure or comfort to 
see other people's defective practice, by which we are 
smarting, covered with an exhibition of fine senti- 
ments. And so, as I peruse Mr. Conant, with Figaro I 
inquire in bewilderment : " Who is it that is being 
taken in here 1" We know perfectly well the real 
facts of the case, and that they are not as Mr. Conant 
puts them ; and we have no interest in getting them 
dressed up to look otherwise than as they are. Our 
interest is to see them as they really are ; for as they 
really are, they are in our favour. 

If American authors have not copyright here in 
England, whose fault is that? It is the fault of 
America herself, who again and again has refused to 
entertain the question of international copyright. 
Again and again, in Mr. Conant's own statement of 
facts, appears the proposal, on the part of England, 
of an international copyright ; and again and again 
the end of it is, "the report was adverse," "no action 
was taken," " shelved," " more pressing matters 
crowded it out of sight." If Englishmen suffer by 
having no copyright in America, they have the 
American government and people to thank for it. 



VII.] COPYRIGHT. 479 

If Americans suffer by having no copyright in 
England, they have only to thank themselves. 

But is it true that American authors have no 
copyright in England ? It is so far from being true, 
that an American has only to visit England when he 
publishes his book here, — or even, I believe, has only 
to cross the border into Canada, — in order to have 
copyright in his work in England. Mr. Motley told 
me himself that in this way he had acquired copyright 
in England for his valuable histories. Mr. Henry 
James gets it in the same way at this moment for 
those charming novels of his which we are all 
reading. But no English author can acquire copy- 
right in the United States. 

As to the liberal pajnnent given at present, with- 
out copyright, by American publisherFl^tr-Efiglish 
authors, it is more difficult to speak securely. Cer- 
tainly it is far too much to say of British authors 
in general, that they " for at least twenty-five years 
past have enjoyed all the material advantages of 
copyright in America;" or that they "have learned 
that their interests are quite safe in the hands of 
American publishers." Considerable sums have, no 
doubt, been paid. Men of science, such as Professor 
Huxley and Professor Tyndall, are especially men- 
tioned as satisfied with the remuneration voluntarily 
accorded to them by the American publishers ; and 
indeed, to judge by the success of their American 
dealings, it seems that these inheritors of the future, 
the men of science, besides having their hold upon 
the world which is to come, have their hold likewise, 
lucky fellows, upon the world which now is! Men 
of letters have not been so fortunate ; and the list, 
given by Mr. Conant, of those to whom a surprising 
amount of money is paid from America, is to be 
received with caution. Mr. Tennyson is mentioned ; 



480 COPYKIGHT. [vii. 

but I hear from the best authority that in truth Mr. 
Tennyson has received little or nothing from the sale 
of his works in America. One can at least speak 
for oneself; and certainly I have never received, 
from first to last, a hundred pounds from America, 
though my books have been, I believe, much reprinted 
there. Mr. Conant will probably say that I am one 
of those authors "whose sale is not remunerative," 
and does not come to much either there or here. 
And perhaps according to the grand scale by which 
he weighs things, this may very well be true. Only, 
if I had not received more than a hundred pounds 
here or in America either, during the quarter of a 
century that I have gone up and down, as the 
mockers say, preaching sweetness and light, one 
could never have managed to drag on, even in Grub 
Street, for all these years. 

The truth is, the interests of British authors in 
general cannot well be safe in America, so long as 
the publishers there are free to reprint whom they 
please, and to pay, of the authors they reprint, whom 
they please, and at what rate they please. The 
interests of English authors will never be safe in 
America until the community, as a community, gets 
the sense, in a higher degree than it has it now, for 
acting with delicacy. It is the sense of delicacy 
which has to be appealed to, not the sense of honesty. 
Englishmen are fond of making the American appro- 
priation of their books a question of honesty. They 
call the appropriation stealing. If an English author 
drops his handkerchief in Massachusetts, they say, 
the natives may not go off with it ; but if he drops 
his poem, they may. This style of talking is ex- 
aggerated and false. There is a breach of delicacy 
in reprinting the foreigner's poem without his con- 
sent, there is no breach of honesty. But a finely 



vii.] COPYRIGHT. 481 

touched nature, in men or nations, will respect in 
itself the sense of delicacy not less than the sense of 
honesty. The Latin nations, the French and Italians, 
have that instinctive recognition of the charm, of art 
and letters, which disposes them, as a community, to 
care for the interests of artists and authors, and to 
treat them with delicacy. In Germany learning is 
very highly esteemed, and both the government and 
the community arc inclined to treat the interests of 
authors considerately and delicately. Aristocracies, 
again, are brought up in elegance and refinement, 
and are taught to believe that art and letters go for 
much in making the beauty and grace of human life, 
and perhaps they do believe it. At any rate, they 
feel bound to show the disposition to treat the 
interests of artists and authors with delicacy ; and 
shown it the aristocratic government and parliament 
of England have. We must not indeed expect them 
to take the trouble for art and letters which the 
government of France will take. "We must not ex- 
pect of them the zeal that procured for French 
authors the Belgian Copyright Treaty of 1854, and 
stopped those Brussels reprints which drove poor 
Balzac to despair. Neither in India, nor in Canada, 
nor yet in the United States, has our aristocratic 
government interposed on behalf of the author with 
this energy. They do not think him and his con- 
cerns of importance enough to deserve it. Still, 
they feel a disposition to treat his interests with 
consideration and with delicacy ; and, so far as the 
thing depends on themselves, they show them. 

The United States are a great middle-class com- 
munity of our own race, — free from many obstruc- 
tions which cramp the middle class in our own 
country, and with a supply of humane individuals 
sown over the land, who keep increasing their num- 

VOL. IV. 2 I 



482 COPYEIGHT. [vii. 

bers and gaming in courage and in strength, and 
more and more make themselves felt in the press 
and periodical literature of America. Still, on the 
whole, the spirit of the American community and 
government is the spirit, I suppose, of a middle-class 
society of our race; and this is not a spirit of 
delicacy. One could not say that in their public 
acts the United States showed, in general, a spirit of 
delicacy. Certainly they have not shown that spirit 
in dealing with authors, — even with their own. They 
deal with authors, domestic and foreign, much as 
Manchester, perhaps, might be disposed, if left to 
itself, to deal with them ; as if, provided a sharp 
bargain was made, and a good thing, as the phrase is, 
was got out of it, that was all which could be desired, 
and the community might exult. The worship of 
sharp bargains is fatal to delicacy. Nor is the miss- 
ing grace restored by accompanying the sharp bargain 
with an exhibition of fine sentiments. 

As the great American community becomes more 
truly and thoroughly civilised, it will certainly learn 
to add to its many and great virtues the spirit of 
delicacy. And English authors will be gainers by it. 
At present they are gainers from another cause. It 
appears that till lately there was an understanding 
amongst American publishers, that, when one pub- 
lisher had made terms with an English author for 
the republication of his work in America, the rest 
should respect the agreement, and should leave their 
colleague in possession of the work. But about two 
years and a half ago, says Mr. Conant, certain parties 
began to set at naught this law of trade-courtesy. 
Certain firms "began to republish the works of 
foreign authors, paying nothing for the privilege, and 
bringing out absurdly cheap editions right on the 
heels of the authorised reprint, which had cost a 



1 



VII.] COPYEIGHT. 483 

large outlay for priority and expense of publication." 
The ruinous competition thus produced has had the 
effect, Mr. Putnam tells us in his pamphlet, of 
"pointing out the absurdity of the present condition 
of literary property, and emphasising the need of an 
international copyright." It has had the effect, he 
says, of " influencing a material modification of opinion 
on the part of publishers who have in years past 
opposed an international copyright as either inex- 
pedient or unnecessary, but who are now quoted as 
ready to give their support to any practicable and 
equitable measure that may be proposed." Nothing 
could be more satisfactory. 

Accordingly, it is now suggested from America 
that an international cop5a"ight treaty should be pro- 
posed by the United States to Great Britain, and, as 
a first step, that "a Commission or Conference of 
American citizens and British subjects, in which the 
United States and Great Britain shall be equally re- 
presented, be appointed respectively by the American 
Secretary of State and by the British Secretary of 
State for Foreign Affairs, who shall be invited jointly 
to consider and present the details of a treaty." 

The details are reserved for the Conference ; but 
it is no secret what the main lines of such a treaty, 
if it is to be accepted in America, must be. The 
American author will be allowed, on registering his 
work, to have copyright in England, and the English 
author to have copyright in the United States. But 
the foreigner's work must be manufactured and pub- 
lished in the country, and by a subject or citizen of 
the country, in which it is registered. The English 
author's book, therefore, to be protected in America, 
must be manufactured and published in America as 
well as in England. He will not be allowed to print 
and publish his book in England only, and to send 



484 COPYRIGHT. [vii. 

his copies over to the United States for sale. The 
main object, I think, of Mr. Conant's exposition, is 
to make it clear to us on the English side of the 
water that from this condition the Americans will 
not suffer themselves to be moved. 

English pubUshers and authors seem inclined to 
cry out that such a condition is an interference with 
the author's " freedom of contract." But then they 
take their stand on the ground that an author's 
production is "property in itself," and that one of 
the incidents of " property in itself " is to confer on 
its possessor the right to " freedom of contract " 
respecting it. I, however, who recognise natural 
difficulty as setting bounds to ownership, must ask 
whether, supposing the English author's need for 
copyright in America to be pressing, he can reason- 
ably expect to be admitted to copyright there without 
this condition. 

Mr. Froude and Mr. Leonard Courtney both of 
them seem to think that the question of international 
copyright is not at all pressing. They say that 
opinion in America is slowly ripening for some better 
and more favourable settlement of copyright than 
any settlement which America is now likely to accept; 
and that, meanwhile, English authors may be well 
enough content with their present receipts from 
American publishers, and had better let things stay 
as they are. 

A few English authors may, perhaps, be content 
enough with their present receipts from America, 
but to suppose that English authors in general may 
well be so content, is, I think, a very hazardous 
supposition. That, however, is of little importance. 
The important question is, whether American opinion, 
if we give it time, is likely to cease insisting on the 
condition that English books, in order to acquire 



VII.] COPYKIGHT. 485 

copyright in America, must be manufactured and 
published there ; is likely to recognise the English 
author and publisher as Siamese twins, one of whom 
is not to be imported without importing the other. 
Is there any chance, in short, of the Americans, 
accustomed to cheap English books, submitting to 
that dearness of English books which is brought 
about in England by what, in spite of all my attach- 
ment to certain English publishers, I must call our 
highly eccentric, artificial, and unsatisfactory system 
of book-trade 1 I confess I see no chance of it what- 
ever. There is a mountain of natural difficulty in 
the way, there is the irresistible opposition of things. 
Here, then, where lies the real gist of his conten- 
tion, I am after all at one with Mr. Conant. The 
Americans ought not to submit to our absurd system 
of dear books. I am sure they will not ; and, as a 
lover of civilisation, I should bo sorry, though I am 
an author, if they did. I hope the Americans will 
give us copyright. But I hope also, that they will 
stick to Michel Levy's excellent doctrine : " Cheap 
books are a necessity, and a necessity which need 
bring, moreover, no loss to either authors or pub- 
lishers." 



VIII. 

PEEFACE TO FIRST EDITION OF POEMS. 
(1853.) 

In two small volumes of Poems, published anony- 
mously, one in 1849, the other in 1852, many of the 
poems which compose the present volume have already 
appeared. The rest are now published for the first 
time. 

I have, in the present collection, omitted the 
poem from which the volume published in 1852 took 
its title. I have done so, not because the subject of 
it was a Sicilian Greek born between two and three 
thousand years ago, although many persons would 
think this a sufficient reason. Neither have I done 
so because I had, in my own opinion, failed in the 
delineation which I intended to effect. I intended 
to delineate the feelings of one of the last of the 
Greek religious philosophers, one of the family of 
Orpheus and Musseus, having survived his fellows, 
living on into a time when the habits of Greek 
thought and feeling had begun fast to change, 
character to dwindle, the influence of the Sophists to 
prevail Into the feelings of a man so situated there 
entered much that we are accustomed to consider as 
exclusively modern ; how much the fragments of 



VIII.] PREFACES TO POEMS. 487 

Empedocles himself which remain to us are sufficient 
at least to indicate. What those who are familiar 
only with the great monuments of early Greek genius 
suppose to be its exclusive characteristics, have dis- 
appeared ; the calm, the cheerfulness, the disinter- 
ested objectivity have disappeared j the dialogue of 
the mind with itself has commenced ; modern prob- 
lems have presented themselves ; we hear already 
the doubts, we witness the discouragement, of Hamlet 
and of Faust. 

The representation of such a man's feelings must 
be interesting if consistently drawn. "\Ye all natur- 
ally take pleasure, says Aristotle, in any imitation or 
representation whatever ; this is the basis of our love 
of poetry ; and we take pleasure in them, he adds, 
because all knowledge is naturally agreeable to us ; 
not to the philosopher only, but to mankind at large. 
Every representation, therefore, which is consistently 
drawn may be supposed to be interesting, inasmuch 
as it gratifies this natural interest in knowledge of 
all kinds. AVhat is not interesting is that which does 
not add to our knowledge of any kind ; that which 
is vaguely conceived and loosely drawn ; a representa- 
tion which is general, indeterminate, and faint, in- 
stead of being particular, precise, and firm. 

Any accurate representation may therefore be 
expected to be interesting ; but, if the representation 
be a poetical one, more than this is demanded. It 
is demanded not only that it shall interest, but also 
that it shall inspirit and rejoice the reader ; that it 
shall convey a charm, and infuse delight. For the 
Muses, as Hesiod says, were born that they might 
be " a forgetfulness of evils, and a truce from cares : " 
and it is not enough that the poet should add to the 
knowledge of men, it is required of him also that he 
should add to their happiness. " All art," says 



488 PEEFACES TO POEMS. [viii. 

Schiller, " is dedicated to joy, and there is no higher 
and no more serious problem than how to make men 
happy. The right art is that alone which creates 
the highest enjoyment." 

A poetical work, therefore, is not yet justified 
when it has been shown to be an accurate and there- 
fore interesting representation; it has to be shown 
also that it is a representation from which men can 
derive enjoyment. In presence of the most tragic 
circumstances, represented in a work of art, the feel- 
ing of enjoyment, as is well known, may still subsist; 
the representation of the most utter calamity, of the 
liveliest anguish, is not sufficient to destroy it ; the 
more tragic the situation, the deeper becomes the 
enjoyment ; and the situation is more tragic in pro- 
portion as it becomes more terrible. 

What then are the situations, from the representa- 
tion of which, though accurate, no poetical enjoy- 
ment can be derived 1 They are those in which the 
suffering finds no vent in action ; in which a continu- 
ous state of mental distress is prolonged, unrelieved 
by incident, hope, or resistance ; in which there is 
everything to be endured, nothing to be done. In 
such situations there is inevitably something morbid, 
in the description of them something monotonous. 
When they occur in actual life they are painful, not 
tragic ; the representation of them in poetry is 
painful also. 

To this class of situations, poetically faulty as it 
appears to me, that of Empedocles, as I have endea- 
voured to represent him, belongs ; and I have there- 
fore excluded the poem from the present collection. 

And why, it may be asked, have I entered into 
this explanation respecting a matter so unimportant 
as the admission or exclusion of the poem in question ? 
I have done so, because I was anxious to avow that 



VIII.] PREFACES TO POEMS. 489 

the sole reason for its exclusion was that which has 
been stated above ; and that it has not been excluded 
in deference to the opinion which many critics of the 
present day appear to entertain against subjects 
chosen from distant times and countries : against the 
choice, in short, of any subjects but modern ones. 

"The poet," it is said,^ and by an intelligent 
critic, "the poet who would really fix the public 
attention must leave the exhausted past and draw 
his subjects from matters of present import, and 
therefore both of interest and novelty." 

Now this view I believe to be completely false. 
It is worth examining, inasmuch as it is a fair sample 
of a class of critical dicta everywhere current at the 
present day, having a philosophical form and air, but 
no real basis in fact; and which are calculated to 
vitiate the judgment of readers of poetry, while they 
exert, so far as they are adopted, a misleading in- 
fluence on the practice of those who make it. 

What are the eternal objects of poetry, among all 
nations, and at all times ? They are actions ; human 
actions; possessing an inherent interest in themselves, 
and which are to be communicated in an interesting 
manner by the art of the poet. Vainly will the 
latter imagine that he has everything in his own 
power; that he can make an intrinsically inferior 
action equally delightful with a more excellent one 
by his treatment of it. He may indeed compel us 
to admire his skill, but his work will possess, within 
itself, an incurable defect. 

The poet, then, has in the first place to select an 
excellent action; and what actions are the most 
excellent % Those, certainly, which most powerfully 
appeal to the great primary human aff'ections : to 

^ In the Spectator of April 2, 1853. The words quoted were 
not used with reference to poems of mine. 



490 PEEFACES TO POEMS. [viii. 

those elementary feelings whicli subsist permanently 
in the race, and which are independent of time. 
These feelings are permanent and the same; that 
which interests them is permanent and the same also. 
The modernness or antiquity of an action, therefore, 
has nothing to do with its fitness for poetical repre- 
sentation j this depends upon its inherent qualities. 
To the elementary part of our nature, to our passions, 
that which is great and passionate is eternally inter- 
esting; and interesting solely in proportion to its 
greatness and to its passion. A great human action 
of a thousand years ago is more interesting to it than 
a smaller human action of to-day, even though upon 
the representation of this last the most consummate 
skUl may have been expended, and though it has the 
advantage of appealing by its modern language, 
familiar manners, and contemporary allusions, to all 
our transient feelings and interests. These, however, 
have no right to demand of a poetical work that it 
shall satisfy them ; their claims are to be directed 
elsewhere. Poetical works belong to the domain of 
our permanent passions ; let them interest these, and 
the voice of all subordinate claims upon them is at 
once silenced. 

Achilles, Prometheus, Clytemnestra, Dido, — what 
modern poem presents personages as interesting, even 
to us moderns, as these personages of an " exhausted 
past?" We have the domestic epic dealing with the 
details of modern life which pass daily under our 
eyes ; we have poems representing modern personages 
in contact with the problems of modern life, moral, 
intellectual, and social ; these works have been pro- 
duced by poets the most distinguished of their nation 
and time ; yet I fearlessly assert that Hermann and 
Dorothea, Childe Harold, Jocelyn, the Excursion, leave 
the reader cold in comparison with the effect pro- 



Y 111.1 PREFACES TO POEMS. 491 

ducod upon him by the hitter books of the lUmf, 
by the Oresteia, or by the episodn of Dido. And 
why is this "? Simply because in the three last-named 
cases the action is greater, the personages nobkn-, the 
situations more intense : and this is the true basis of 
the interest in a poetical work, and this ah)ne. 

It may be urged, however, that past actions may 
be interesting in themselves, but that they are not 
to be adopted by the modern poet, because it is 
impossible for him to have them clearly present to 
his own mind, and he cannot therefore feel them 
deeply, nor represent them forcibly. But this is not 
necessarily the case. The externals of a past action, 
indeed, he cannot know with the precision of a con- 
temporary; but his business is with its essentials. 
The outward man of QCdipus or of Macbeth, the 
houses in which they lived, the ceremonies of their 
courts, he cannot accurately figure to himself; but 
neither do they essentially concern him. His busi- 
ness is with their inward man ; with their feelings 
and behaviour in certain tragic situations, which 
engage their passions as men ; these have in them 
nothing local and casual ; they are as accessible to 
the modern poet as to a contemporary. 

The date of an action, then, signifies nothing ; the 
action itself, its selection and construction, this is 
what is all-important. This the Greeks understood 
far more clearly than wo do. The radical diiference 
between their poetical theory and ours consists, as it 
appears to me, in this : that, with them, the poetical 
character of the action in itself, and the conduct of 
it, was the first consideration ; with us, attention is 
fixed mainly on the value of the separate thoughts 
and images which occur in the treatment of an action. 
They regarded the whole ; we regard the parts. 
With them the action predominated over the ex- 



492 PREFACES TO POEMS. [viii. 

pression of it ; with us the expression predominates 
over the action. Not that they failed in expression, 
or were inattentive to it ; on the contrary, they are 
the highest models of expression, the unapproached 
masters of the grand style. But their expression is 
so excellent because it is so admirably kept in its 
right degree of prominence ; because it is so simple 
and so well subordinated ; because it draws its force 
directly from the pregnancy of the matter which it 
conveys. For what reason was the Greek tragic 
poet confined to so limited a range of subjects'? 
Because there are so few actions which unite in 
themselves, in the highest degree, the conditions of 
excellence : and it was not thought that on any but 
an excellent subject could an excellent poem be con- 
structed. A few actions, therefore, eminently adapted 
for tragedy, maintained almost exclusive possession of 
the Greek tragic stage. Their significance appeared 
inexhaustible; they were as permanent problems, 
perpetually offered to the genius of every fresh poet. 
This, too, is the reason of what appears to us moderns 
a certain baldness of expression in Greek tragedy ; 
of the triviality with which we often reproach the 
remarks of the chorus, where it takes part in the 
dialogue : that the action itself, the situation of 
Orestes, or Merope, or Alcmaeon, was to stand the 
central point of interest, unforgotten, absorbing, 
principal ; that no accessories were for a moment to 
distract the spectator's attention from this ; that the 
tone of the parts was to be perpetually kept down, 
in order not to impair the grandiose effect of the 
whole. The terrible old mythic story on which the 
drama was founded stood, before he entered the 
theatre, traced in its bare outlines upon the spectator's 
mind ; it stood in his memory as a gToup of statuary, 
faintly seen, at the end of a long and dark vista : 



VIII.] PEEFACES TO POEMS. 493 

then came the poet, embodying outlines, developing 
situations, not a word wasted, not a sentiment 
capriciously thrown in; stroke upon stroke, the 
drama proceeded ; the light deepened upon the 
group; more and more it revealed itself to the 
riveted gaze of the spectator, until at last, when the 
final words were spoken, it stood before him in 
broad sunlight, a model of immortal beauty. 

This was what a Greek critic demanded ; this 
was what a Greek poet endeavoured to effect. It 
signified nothing to what time an action belonged. 
We do not find that the Persse occupied a particularly 
high rank among the dramas of ^schylus, because it 
represented a matter of contemporary interest ; this 
was not what a cultivated Athenian required. He 
required that the permanent elements of his nature 
should be moved j and dramas of which the action, 
though taken from a long -distant mythic time, yet 
was calculated to accomplish this in a higher degree 
than that of the Persse, stood higher in his estimation 
accordingly. The Greeks felt, no doubt, with their 
exquisite sagacity of taste, that an action of present 
times was too near them, too much mixed up with 
what was accidental and passing, to form a sufiiciently 
grand, detached, and self-subsistent object for a tragic 
poem. Such objects belonged to the domain of the 
comic poet, and of the lighter kinds of poetry. Por 
the more serious kinds, for pragmatic poetry, to use 
an excellent expression of Polybius, they were more 
difficult and severe in the range of subjects which 
they permitted. Their theory and practice alike, the 
admirable treatise of Aristotle, and the unrivalled 
works of their poets, exclaim with a thousand 
tongues — " All depends upon the subject ; choose a 
fitting action, penetrate yourself with the feeling of 
its situations ; this done, everything else will follow." 



494 PREFACES TO POEMS. [viii. 

But for all kinds of poetry alike there was one 
point on which they were rigidly exacting : the 
adaptability of the subject to the kind of poetry 
selected, and the careful construction of the poem. 

How different a way of thinking from this is ours ! 
We can hardly at the present day understand what 
Menander meant, when he told a man who enquired 
as to the progress of his comedy that he had finished 
it, not having yet written a single line, because he 
had constructed the action of it in his mind. A 
modern critic would have assured him that the merit 
of his piece depended on the brilliant things which 
arose under his pen as he went along. We have 
poems which seem to exist merely for the sake of 
single lines and passages ; not for the sake of pro- 
ducing any total impression. We have critics who 
seem to direct their attention merely to detached 
expressions, to the language about the action, not to 
the action itself. I verily think that the majority of 
them do not in their hearts believe that there is such 
a thing as a total impression to be derived from a 
poem at all, or to be demanded from a poet ; they 
think the term a commonplace of metaphysical 
criticism. They will permit the poet to select any 
action he pleases, and to suffer that action to go as 
it will, provided he gratifies them with occasional 
bursts of fine writing, and with a shower of isolated 
thoughts and images. That is, they permit him to 
leave their poetical sense ungratified, provided that 
he gratifies their rhetorical sense and their curiosity. 
Of his neglecting to gratify these, there is little 
danger. He needs rather to be warned against the 
danger of attempting to gratify these alone ; he 
needs rather to be perpetually reminded to prefer 
his action to everything else ; so to treat this, as to 
permit its inherent excellences to develop them- 



VIII.] PREFACES TO POEMS. 495 

selves, without interruption from the intrusion of his 
personal peculiarities ; most fortunate, when he most 
entirely succeeds in efifacing himself, and in enabling 
a noble action to subsist as it did in nature. 

But the modern critic not only permits a false 
practice ; he absolutely prescribes false aims. " A 
true allegory of the state of one's own mind in a 
representative history," the poet is told, " is perhaps 
the highest thing that one can attempt in the way 
of poetry." And accordingly he attempts it. An 
allegory of the state of one's own mind, the highest 
problem of an art which imitates actions ! No, 
assuredly, it is not, it never can be so : no great 
poetical work has ever been produced with such an 
aim. Faust itself, in which something of the kind is 
attempted, wonderful passages as it contains, and in 
spite of the unsurpassed beauty of the scenes which 
relate to Margaret, Faust itself, judged as a whole, 
and judged strictly as a poetical work, is defective : 
its illustrious author, the greatest poet of modern 
times, the greatest critic of all times, would have 
been the first to acknowledge it ; he only defended 
his work, indeed, by asserting it to be "something 
incommensurable. " 

The confusion of the present times is great, the 
multitude of voices counselling different things 
bewildering, the number of existing works capable of 
attracting a young writer's attention and of becoming 
his models, immense. What he wants is a hand to 
guide him through the confusion, a voice to prescribe 
to him the aim which he should keep in view, and to 
explain to him that the value of the literary works 
which offer themselves to his attention is relative to 
their power of helping him forward on his road 
towards this aim. Such a guide the English writer 
at the present day will nowhere find. Failing this, 



496 PREFACES TO POEMS. [viii. 

all that can be looked for, all indeed that can be 
desired, is, that his attention should be fixed on 
excellent models ; that he may reproduce, at any 
rate, something of their excellence, by penetrating 
himself with their works and by catching their spirit, 
if he cannot be taught to produce what is excellent 
independently. 

Foremost among these models for the English 
writer stands Shakspeare : a name the greatest 
perhaps of all poetical names ; a name never to be 
mentioned without reverence. I will venture, how- 
ever, to express a doubt, whether the influence of his 
works, excellent and fruitful for the readers of poetry, 
for the great majority, has been of unmixed advantage 
to the writers of it. Shakspeare indeed chose excel- 
lent subjects j the world could afi'ord no better than 
Macbeth, or Borneo and Juliet, or Othello; he had 
no theory respecting the necessity of choosing 
subjects of present import, or the paramount interest 
attaching to allegories of the state of one's own mind; 
like all great poets, he knew well what constituted a 
poetical action ; like them, wherever he found such 
an action he took it ; like them, too, he found his 
best in past times. But to these general characteristics 
of all great poets he added a special one of his own ; 
a gift, namely, of happy, abundant, and ingenious 
expression, eminent and unrivalled : so eminent as 
irresistibly to strike the attention first in him, and 
even to throw into comparative shade his other 
excellences as a poet. Here has been the mischief. 
These other excellences were his fundamental excel- 
lences as a poet ; what distinguishes the artist from 
the mere amateur, says Goethe, is Architectonic^ in 
the highest sense; that power of execution, which 
creates, forms, and constitutes : not the profoundness 
of single thoughts, not the richness of imagery, not 



VIII.] PREFACES TO POEMS. 497 

the abundance of illustration. But these attractive 
accessories of a poetical work being more easily 
seized than the spirit of the whole, and these 
accessories being possessed by Shakspeare in an 
unequalled degree, a young writer having recourse to 
Shakspeare as his model runs great risk of being 
vanquished and absorbed by them, and, in con- 
sequence, of reproducing, according to the measure 
of his power, these, and these alone. Of this prepon- 
derating quality of Shakspeare's genius, accordingly, 
almost the whole of modem English poetry has, it 
appears to me, felt the influence. To the exclusive 
attention on the part of his imitators to this it is in 
a great degree owing, that of the majority of modern 
poetical works the details alone are valuable, the 
composition worthless. In reading them one is 
perpetually reminded of that terrible sentence on a 
modern French poet : — II dit tout ce quHl veut, mais 
malheureusement il rHa rien d, dire. 

Let me give an instance of what I mean. I will 
take it from the works of the very chief among those 
who seem to have been formed in the school of Shak- 
speare ; of one whose exquisite genius and pathetic 
death render him for ever interesting. I will take 
the poem of Isabella, or the Pot of Basil, by Keats. 
I choose this rather than the Endymion, because the 
latter work (which a modern critic has classed with 
the Faery Queen !), although undoubtedly there blows 
through it the breath of genius, is yet, as a whole, so 
utterly incoherent, as not strictly to merit the name 
of a poem at all. The poem of Isabella, then, is a 
perfect treasure-house of graceful and felicitous words 
and images : almost in every stanza there occurs one 
of those vivid and picturesque turns of expression, 
by which the object is made to flash upon the eye of 
the mind, and which thrill the reader with a sudden 

VOL. IV. 2 K 



498 PREFACES TO POEMS. [viii. 

delight. This one short poem contains, perhaps, a 
greater number of happy single expressions which 
one could quote than all the extant tragedies of 
Sophocles. But the action, the story 1 The action 
in itself is an excellent one ; but so feebly is it con- 
ceived by the poet, so loosely constructed, that the 
effect produced by it, in and for itself, is absolutely 
null. Let the reader, after he has finished the poem 
of Keats, turn to the same story in the Decameron : 
he will then feel how pregnant and interesting the 
same action has become in the hands of a great 
artist, who above all things delineates his object; 
who subordinates expression to that which it is 
designed to express. 

I have said that the imitators of Shakspeare, 
fixing their attention on his wonderful gift of expres- 
sion, have directed their imitation to this, neglecting 
his other excellences. These excellences, the funda- 
mental excellences of poetical art, Shakspeare no 
doubt possessed them, — possessed many of them in 
a splendid degree ; but it may perhaps be doubted 
whether even he himself did not sometimes give scope 
to his faculty of expression to the prejudice of a higher 
poetical duty. For we must never forget that 
Shakspeare is the great poet he is from his skill in 
discerning and firmly conceiving an excellent action, 
from his power of intensely feeling a situation, of 
intimately associating himself with a character ; not 
from his gift of expression, which rather even leads 
him astray, degenerating sometimes into a fondness 
for curiosity of expression, into an irritability of 
fancy, which seems to make it impossible for him 
to say a thing plainly, even when the press of the 
action demands the very directest language, or its 
level character the very simplest. Mr. Hallam, than 
whom it is impossible to find a saner and more 



I 



VIII.] PEEFACES TO POEMS. 499 

judicious critic, has had the courage (for at the 
present day it needs courage) to remark, how ex- 
tremely and faultily difficult Shakspeare's language 
often is. It is so : you may find main scenes in 
some of his greatest tragedies. King Lear, for instance, 
where the language is so artificial, so curiously 
tortured, and so difficult, that every speech has to be 
read two or three times before its meaning can be 
comprehended. This over-curiousness of expression 
is indeed but the excessive employment of a wonder- 
ful gift, — of the power of saying a thing in a happier 
way than any other man ; nevertheless, it is carried 
so far that one understands what M. Guizot meant, 
when he said that Shakspeare appears in his language 
to have tried all styles except that of simplicity. 
He has not the severe and scrupulous self-restraint 
of the ancients, partly, no doubt, because he had a 
far less cultivated and exacting audience. He has 
indeed a far wider range than they had, a far richer 
fertility of thought; in this respect he rises above 
them. In his strong conception of his subject, in 
the genuine way in which he is penetrated with it, 
he resembles them, and is unlike the moderns. But 
in the accurate limitation of it, the conscientious 
rejection of superfluities, the simple and rigorous 
development of it from the first line of his work to 
the last, he falls below them, and comes nearer to 
the moderns. In his chief works, besides what he 
has of his own, he has the elementary soundness of 
the ancients ; he has their important action and 
their large and broad manner ; but he has not their 
purity of method. He is therefore a less safe model ; 
for what he has of his own is personal, and insepar- 
able from his own rich nature ; it may be imitated 
and exaggerated, it cannot be learned or applied as 
an art. He is above all suggestive ; more valuable, 



500 PEEFACES TO POEMS. [viii. 

therefore, to young writers as men than as artists. 
But clearness of arrangement, rigour of development, 
simplicity of style, — these may to a certain extent be 
learned ; and these may, I am convinced, be learned 
best from the ancients, who, although infinitely less 
suggestive than Shakspeare, are thus, to the artist, 
more instructive. 

What then, it will be asked, are the ancients to be 
our sole models'? the ancients with their compara- 
tively narrow range of experience, and their widely 
different circumstances ] Not, certainly, that which 
is narrow in the ancients, nor that in which we can 
no longer sympathise. An action like the action of 
the Antigone of Sophocles, which turns upon the 
conflict between the heroine's duty to her brother's 
corpse and that to the laws of her country, is no 
longer one in which it is possible that we should 
feel a deep interest. I am speaking too, it will be 
remembered, not of the best sources of intellectual 
stimulus for the general reader, but of the best 
models of instruction for the individual writer. This 
last may certainly learn of the ancients, better than 
anywhere else, three things which it is vitally im- 
portant for him to know — the all-importance of the 
choice of a subject; the necessity of accurate con- 
struction ; and the subordinate character of expression. 
He will learn from them how unspeakably superior 
is the effect of the one moral impression left by a 
great action treated as a whole, to the effect produced 
by the most striking single thought or by the happiest 
image. As he penetrates into the spirit of the great 
classical works, as he becomes gradually aware of 
their intense significance, their noble simplicity, and 
their calm pathos, he will be convinced that it is 
this effect, unity and profoundness of moral impres- 
sion, at which the ancient poets aimed ; that it is 



VIII.] PREFACES TO POEMS. 501 

this which constitutes the grandeur of their works, 
and which makes them immortal. He will desire to 
direct his own efforts towards producing the same 
effect. Above all, he will deliver himself from the 
jargon of modern criticism, and escape the danger of 
producing poetical works conceived in the spirit of 
the passing time, and which partake of its transitori- 
ness. 

The present age makes great claims upon us ; we 
owe it service, it will not be satisfied without our 
admiration. I know not how it is, but their com- 
merce with the ancients appears to me to produce, in 
those who constantly practise it, a steadying and 
composing effect upon their judgment, not of literary 
works only, but of men and events in general. They 
are like persons who have had a very weighty and 
impressive experience ; they are more truly than 
others under the empire of facts, and more independ- 
ent of the language current among those with whom 
they live. They wish neither to applaud nor to 
revile their age ; they wish to know what it is, what 
it can give them, and whether this is what they 
want. What they want, they know very well ; they 
want to educe and cultivate what is best and noblest 
in themselves ; they know, too, that this is no easy task 
— XaXeirov^ as PittacUS said, X^'^^''"*^^ icrOkov efificvai — 
and they ask themselves sincerely whether their age 
and its literature can assist them in the attempt. If 
they are endeavouring to practise any art, they 
remember the plain and simple proceedings of the 
old artists, who attained their grand results by 
penetrating themselves with some noble and signifi- 
cant action, not by inflating themselves with a belief 
in the pre-eminent importance and greatness of their 
own times. They do not talk of their mission, nor 
of interpreting their age, nor of the coming poet ; all 



502 PREFACES TO POEMS. [viii. 

this, they know, is the mere delirium of vanity; 
their business is not to praise their age, but to afford 
to the men who live in it the highest pleasure which 
they are capable of feeling. If asked to afford this 
by means of subjects drawn from the age itself, they 
ask what special fitness the present age has for 
supplying them. They are told that it is an era of 
progress, an age commissioned to carry out the great 
ideas of industrial development and social ameliora- 
tion. They reply that with all this they can do 
nothing ; that the elements they need for the exercise 
of their art are great actions, calculated powerfully 
and delightfully to affect what is permanent in the 
human soul ; that so far as the present age can 
supply such actions, they will gladly make use of 
them ; but that an age wanting in moral grandeur 
can with difficulty supply such, and an age of spiritual 
discomfort with difficulty be powerfully and delight- 
fully affected by them. 

A host of voices will indignantly rejoin that the 
present age is inferior to the past neither in moral 
grandeur nor in spiritual health. He who possesses 
the discipline I speak of will content himself with 
remembering the judgments passed upon the present 
age, in this respect, by the men of strongest head 
and widest culture whom it has produced ; by Goethe 
and by Niebuhr. It will be sufficient for him that 
he knows the opinions held by these two great men 
respecting the present age and its literature; and 
that he feels assured in his own m'nd that their 
aims and demands upon life were such as he would 
wish, at any rate, his own to be ; and their judgment 
as to what is impeding and disabling such as he may 
safely follow. He will not, however, maintain a 
hostile attitude towards the false pretensions of his 
age : he will content himself with not being over- 



VIII.] PEEFACES TO POEMS. 503 

whelmed by them. He will esteem himself fortunate 
if he can succeed in banishing from his mind all 
feelings of contradiction, and irritation, and impa- 
tience ; in order to delight himself with the contem- 
plation of some noble action of a heroic time, and to 
enable others, through his representation of it, to 
delight in it also. 

I am far indeed from making any claim, for 
myself, that I possess this discipline ; or for the 
following poems, that they breathe its spirit. But I 
say, that in the sincere endeavour to learn and 
practise, amid the bewildering confusion of our 
times, what is sound and true in poetical art, I 
seemed to myself to find the only sure guidance, the 
only solid footing, among the ancients. They, at 
any rate, knew what they wanted in art, and we do 
not. It is this uncertainty which is disheartening, 
and not hostile criticism. How often have I felt 
this when reading words of disparagement or of 
cavil : that it is the uncertainty as to what is really 
to be aimed at which makes our difficulty, not the 
dissatisfaction of the critic, who himself suffers from 
the same uncertainty ! Non me tua fervida terrenf 
Dicta ; . . . Dii me terrent, et Jupiter hostis. 

Two kinds of dilettanti, says Goethe, there are in 
poetry: he who neglects the indispensable mechanical 
part, and thinks he has done enough if he shows 
spirituality and feeling ; and he who seeks to arrive 
at poetry merely by mechanism, in which he can 
acquire an artisan's readiness, and is without soul 
and matter. And he adds, that the first does most 
harm to art, and the last to himself. If we must 
be dilettanti: if it is impossible for us, under the 
circumstances amidst which we live, to think clearly, 
to feel nobly, and to delineate firmly : if we cannot 
attain to the mastery of the great artists ; — let us. 



504 PREFACES TO POEMS. [viii. 

at least, have so much respect for our art as to prefer 
it to ourselves. Let us not bewilder our successors ; 
let us transmit to them the practice of poetry, with 
its boundaries and wholesome regulative laws, under 
which excellent works may again, perhaps, at some 
future time, be produced, not yet fallen into oblivion 
through our neglect, not yet condemned and can- 
celled by the influence of their eternal enemy, 
caprice. 



PEEFACE TO SECOND EDITION OE 
POEMS. (1854.) 

I HAVE allowed the Preface to the former edition of 
these Poems to stand almost without change, because 
I still believe it to be, in the main, true. I must 
not, however, be supposed insensible to the force of 
much that has been alleged against portions of it, or 
unaware that it contains many things incompletely 
stated, many things which need limitation. It 
leaves, too, untouched the question, how far and in 
what manner the opinions there expressed respecting 
the^ choice of subjects apply to lyric poetry,— that 
region of the poetical field which is chiefly cultivated 
at present. But neither do I propose at the present 
tune to supply these deficiencies, nor, indeed, would 
this be the proper place for attempting it. On one 
or two points alone I wish to off'er, in the briefest 
possible way, some explanation. 

An objection has been warmly urged to the 
classing together, as subjects equally belonging to a 
past time, (Edipus and Macbeth. And it is no 
doubt true that to Shakspeare, standing on the verge 
of the Middle Ages, the epoch of Macbeth was more 
familiar than that of (Edipus. But I was speaking 
of actions as they presented themselves to us 
moderns; and it will hardly be said that the 

VOL. IV. 2l 



606 PREFACES TO POEMS. [viii. 

European mind, in our day, has much more affinity 
with the times of Macbeth than with those of 
QMipus. As moderns, it seems to me, we have no 
longer any direct affinity with the circumstances and 
feelings of either. As individuals, we are attracted 
towards this or that personage, we have a capacity 
for imagining him, irrespective of his times, solely 
according to a law of personal sympathy ; and those 
subjects for which we feel this personal attraction 
most strongly, we may hope to treat successfully. 
Prometheus or Joan of Arc, Charlemagne or Aga- 
memnon, — one of these is not really nearer to us 
now than another. Each can be made present only 
by an act of poetic imagination; but this man's 
imagination has an affinity for one of them, and that 
man's for another. 

It has been said that I wished to limit the poet, 
in his choice of subjects, to the period of Greek and 
Eoman antiquity ; but it is not so. I only counsel 
him to choose for his subjects great actions, without 
regarding to what time they belong. Nor do I deny 
that the poetic faculty can and does manifest itself in 
treating the most trifling action the most hopeless 
subject. But it is a pity that power should be 
wasted ; and that the poet should be compelled to 
impart interest and force to his subject, instead of 
receiving them from it, and thereby doubling his 
impressiveness. There is, it has been excellently 
said, an immortal strength in the stories of great 
actions ; the most gifted poet, then, may well be 
glad to supplement with, it that mortal weakness, 
which, in presence of the vast spectacle of life and 
the world, he must for ever feel to be his individual 
portion. 

Again, with respect to the study of the classical 
writers of antiquity; it has been said that we 



VIII.] PREFACES TO POEMS. 507 

should emulate rather than imitate them. I make 
no objection ; all I say is, let us study them. They 
can help to cure us of what is, it seems to me, the 
great vice of our intellect, manifesting itself in our 
incredible vagaries in literature, in art, in religion, in 
morals : namely, that it is fantastic^ and wants sanity. 
Sanity, — that is the great virtue of the ancient 
literature; the want of that is the great defect of 
the modern, in spite of all its variety and power. 
It is impossible to read carefully the great ancients, 
without losing something of our caprice and eccen- 
tricity ; and to emulate them we must at least read 
them. 



THE END OF VOL. IV. 



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